


Bleeding Heart

by orphan_account



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Not Epilogue Compliant, Resurrection, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-24 16:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12017025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: War criminals are rising from the dead (again), Suna doesn't want to give Sakura back to Konoha (awkward), Sasori is a creep (still), and nobody's getting paid enough for this shit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For reference: this story takes place about a year after _The Last_ , the details of which are not expounded upon in-narrative because I haven't seen it, my dudes.
> 
>  _Bleeding heart_ is a nickname for _Lamprocapnos spectabilis_ , a species of flowering plant, which is poisonous ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

About three hundred feet away from Sunagakure’s front gate, Sakura halted her progress to rub her fists against her eyes. Regret hit her faster than the sand stuck to her gloves could hit her eyes: _bad move_.

She didn’t even know why she’d thought it was a hallucination. If the desert hadn’t managed to fog her mind for the days she’d been travelling through it, why should it start messing with her now that she was nearly at its end? It wasn’t a genjutsu, either; she was sure of that much. And now her eyes were burning and teary, and for _what_ , exactly?

God, she hated Wind Country. She liked the people well enough, but the landscape could just go straight to hell.

Correction: the landscape _was_ hell.

“Open your eyes,” said Temari, and because Sakura trusted her, she obeyed without hesitating. 

Only to flinch away from the slap of _cold and wet_ , but not before what water was left in Temari’s insulated canteen could rinse the sand from her eyes. Sakura blinked, soggy lashes fluttering, and smiled weakly at her escort.

“Thanks. And, um, sorry.” Sakura glanced at what lay beyond Suna’s open gates—unchanged, which Sakura decided to take as reassuring, because if what she saw really was a mirage, surely the shock of water would’ve dispelled it—and then refocused on Temari. “I just thought—”

“You’re not seeing things,” said Temari, resuming the last leg of their trek, and Sakura took that as her cue to get her butt in gear.

Sakura wanted to jog until she could see Temari’s face, but decided to conserve her energy instead; if she fainted from heat exhaustion, Temari—no, _the entire population of Suna_ —would laugh her out of the village. Sakura contented herself with the knowledge that even if she couldn’t dissect Temari’s facial expressions from this vantage point, she could still analyze her tone of voice and speech patterns.    

“I already figured it was serious,” Sakura said leadingly, “but I wasn’t thinking _Kage_   _at the gate_ serious.”

“You were going to see him eventually,” said Temari, disappointingly neutral. “And you _are_ the Fifth’s apprentice. He wouldn’t want to insult you by making you wait.”

There _was_ that, but—

“It’s urgent,” said Sakura, trailing Temari into the gate’s deep shadows, “isn’t it?”

Temari tossed Sakura a look over her shoulder, and it took Sakura a moment to process the bitter twist of her mouth as a smile.  

“What was your first clue?” Temari asked.

Gaara waited for them on the gate’s other side, standing just within its shadow. He wore pale robes and no gourd, but the absence of the latter made no difference, seeing as his weapon of choice surrounded them on all sides, cushioning their feet and sticking to their skin.

The idea that Gaara could make a weapon out of the sand particles stuck to Sakura’s face added some real urgency to her desire for a shower.

Biting her tongue so she wouldn’t beg him for a tub of cold or even lukewarm water, Sakura met Gaara’s eyes briefly before bowing at the waist. It was as much a gesture of respect as it was a ploy to hide whatever showed on her face.

“Kazekage-sama,” Sakura said, privately wishing that formalities could have waited until after she’d cleaned up. “Thank you for coming out to greet me personally. I apologize for my delayed arrival.”

“Your apology is accepted, if unnecessary,” said Gaara. “I understand that our request was unconventional.”

A request for Sakura specifically—and _only_ Sakura, details withheld pending her arrival in Suna. If Temari herself hadn’t come to pick Sakura up, she might’ve said no regardless of Konoha’s close ties to Suna.

Even as she’d packed for her departure, Kakashi and Tsunade and those old fogies in the Council had _still_ recommended that Sakura decline Suna’s invitation.

Sakura opened her mouth to parrot the usual _of course it was no inconvenience_ and _I’m always happy to assist our closest allies_ , but then a canteen was thrust under her nose, and she bobbed out of her bow before it could hit her in the face.

“Drink,” said Gaara, and although his facial expression didn’t change (standard), he managed to look disappointed with Sakura’s slow reaction time. “It’ll be fresher than whatever’s been left to stagnate in your canteens.”  

“Thank you, Kazekage-sama,” said Sakura, admirably demure, and accepted the proffered canteen. What she wanted to do was upend the thing over her head, but she forced herself to take a couple of slow, deep drinks before passing the canteen of cold, glorious ambrosia to Temari, who didn’t drink from it so much as siphon it.

“Follow me,” said Gaara, turning on his heel. Looked like the niceties were officially concluded.

At least he got straight to the point.

Sakura followed the Kazekage, forcing herself to walk at a steady, decisive pace for all that she wanted to plod, or maybe lie down in the sand and take a nap, heedless of third degree sunburn or potential death via exposure.

Temari finally relinquished the canteen, and when Sakura shook it, she was mildly surprised to find that there was enough water left to make it slosh. Then Temari pressed her fist against her lips and pointedly cleared her throat.

Gaara halted, and Sakura planted her feet in the packed sand so as to not bash her nose against his back. She liked Gaara, and she trusted him not to hurt her, but if she touched him without warning, even by accident, she might wind up with a face full of sand for her troubles.

“Er.” Gaara’s head swiveled on his neck, and Sakura smiled automatically upon making eye contact. Gaara did not smile back. “Before we conduct our business, would you like to rest? Eat? You must be…hungry.”

Temari smiled at her brother and flashed him an indiscreet thumbs-up.

Sakura pressed her palm to her stomach, the better to discourage rumbling, and mostly out of pity, said, “No, that’s all right. Food and rest can wait. This can’t, can it?”

Gaara’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “It can wait, but it probably shouldn’t.”

Okay. Whatever it was, Gaara wanted to get it over with. That couldn’t be good.

“Sakura’s pretty tough for a Leaf, isn’t she, Gaara?” Temari clamped her hand on Sakura’s shoulder, shaking her gently, and Gaara made a noncommittal sound. “We’ll make an honorary Suna-nin out of her yet.”

Sakura pictured the look that would’ve warped Tsunade’s face had she been present to hear _that_ , and smiled a bit queasily.

“Don’t let my superiors hear you say that, Temari-san.” Sakura tried to soften the tacit rejection with a laugh, but it came out stilted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t.” Now Temari laughed, and it was much more genuine than what Sakura’d coughed up. “I’m surprised they let you out of the village, not that I can blame them. We were pretty cagey about the whole thing, weren’t we, Gaara?”

Gaara made another wordless noise that could’ve been affirmation or dismissal, and Sakura—

Sakura snapped, “No one _lets_ me do anything,” and immediately wished she could’ve crammed the words back down her throat. “Er, I mean, the Hokage and his Council trust my judgment—”

Temari laughed again, so hard that passerby—few and far between, because it was high noon and most residents had taken shelter indoors—stopped to gape before remembering themselves and bowing at the Kazekage and his sister—and to Sakura?

“You are really too good for Konoha, Sakura, you know that?” Temari bit off the tail end of her laughter, and as she stifled it, she followed Sakura’s gaze. “Oh, they knew you’d be showing up. We just didn’t tell them what _for_.”

“We did, actually,” said Gaara, forcibly reminding Sakura that she’d just behaved arrogantly in front of a Kage, oh god, and that nobody but _Naruto_ was stupid enough to do that. “But we lied.”

“We told them that you were here to oversee changes in Suna Hospital’s administration,” said Temari, waving off a civilian who looked like they might approach. “And if you’ve got the free time while you’re here, you really should drop by. It’s improved since your last visit.”

Temari thought that Sakura might have free time during her stay. Just how long did Suna want her for?

Sakura meant to ask just that, but the high stone wall they walked beside rumbled, a gap grinding open, and Gaara led the way through it, across a narrow courtyard, and to a deep doorway.

The two kunoichi stationed at the door both bowed, and then one spoke.

“Kazekage-sama,” she said. “Sakura-sama’s been granted clearance.”

“Good,” said Gaara. “Thank you.”

Sakura opened her mouth.

Shut it.

Opened it again.

“Sakura- _sama_?” she parroted, and the itch that broke out on her skin had nothing to do with sand.

“Don’t tell us you’ve never heard it before,” Temari teased, and Sakura hoped that her flush could be attributed to sunburn.

“Well,” Sakura tried. “Um.”

“Articulate,” Temari drawled, and Sakura would’ve thrown a punch straight for her nose if not for Gaara’s presence.  

The temperature dropped as soon as they crossed the building’s threshold, but not by much, not with the desert’s baking heat still rolling in through the open doorway. It wasn’t until they’d passed through another set of doors that the air began to cool in earnest.

It took Sakura a moment too long to notice that the temperature wasn’t all that’d changed. She held out her right arm and stared at it.  

At some point between the first set of doors and the second, the sand ground into her skin had sloughed off. She scanned the floor, looking for the telltale piles of the stuff, and found nothing.

The thing was, though.

Some of the disappeared sand had gotten under her _clothes_.

She glanced at Gaara. “Thanks?” she tried. Her voice cracked like a teenage boy’s.

 _Hell_.

Gaara just shrugged, because he was Gaara and a damn Suna-nin. Suna-nin, Sakura had learned, had only a theoretical understanding of modesty, which was convenient when you were on a mission with them, but not so much otherwise.

Sakura clamped her lips together and faced front.

This was a Hidden Village, which meant that all public buildings were heavily guarded, both visibly and from the shadows, so it wasn’t until they’d turned the corner into the first cell block that Sakura realized that they were inside of a prison.

 _Granted clearance_ , the kunoichi posted out front had said.

Sakura kept her mouth shut and her head bowed, listening for the cells’ occupants and hearing nothing, not even a rat’s scuffle. That was good, right? Suna’s crime rate must’ve gone down.

Either that, or they hadn’t quite severed their attachment to the death penalty.  

“You can ask questions,” Temari said as they descended a set of stairs, the plunging temperature and look of the walls telling Sakura that they’d moved swiftly underground. “But you should save them for after.”

 _After what?_ Sakura thought, and then answered her own question: _After they’ve shown me the prisoner they want me to meet._

But why would Suna want to introduce Sakura to one of their prisoners? Were they badly injured and in need of help only a medic of Sakura’s caliber could provide? If so, what was so important about them that Suna would want them alive? Information, obviously. Perhaps Suna wanted Sakura to heal this prisoner because they were well on their way to dying before anything worth knowing could be tortured out of them.

Torture, Sakura knew, was a harsh necessity in this life, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. As a physician, her revulsion for it was instinctual. Crushing someone’s skull, she could do, but methodically cutting essential parts of a person away until they broke was—

“We had to clear the entire west end of the prison, every floor,” Temari was saying, voice so hushed that it didn’t even echo off the stone walls. “We had to be very careful about which guards to post, too. Puppet masters only.”

Sakura’s brows drew together. The electric lights strung along the stone walls were a modern concession in a primitive place, and their glare pounded at her eyes in ways that the harsh desert sun couldn’t hope to compete with.

“Gaara broke his hands, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We can’t leave him alone with people who don’t know how chakra strings work.”

_Broke his hands. Chakra strings._

Quite without her permission, Sakura’s feet stopped in their tracks. Her right hand curled against her stomach and walked on trembling fingers to the space left of her abdomen.

As a unit, Gaara and Temari stopped and turned. Temari was frowning, and Gaara looked as though he could see right into Sakura’s mind, as easy as any member of Konoha’s Torture and Interrogation Unit, and peel her thoughts out of the grooves in her brain.

“Sakura?” Temari took one step forward. Two. “You need a minute?”

“No,” Sakura heard herself say. She looked at her feet, watched them move without feeling the impact of her heels on the stone floor. “No, I’m fine.”

Her abdomen twinged.

Sakura turned the corner, flanked by Gaara and Temari, and cataloged the ninja lining the corridor like she was an art patron picking details out of a picture. One of the figures stood out, though, black clothes to the others’ shades of brown, painted face to their bare cheeks.

“Thank god,” said Kankuro, and Sakura realized _she’d_ triggered the look of relief on his face. “Maybe now he'll shut the hell up.”

“Where’d all that hero worship go?” asked Temari. “Never meet your idols, right?”

“The hero worship took a hit when he nearly poisoned me to death.” Kankuro nodded to Sakura. “Hey. I’m kinda surprised you showed. I made a bet with Temari, you know? Said you guys would tell us to go fuck ourselves.”

With some effort, Sakura unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth. It was so dry, her mouth. Where’d she put that canteen? She’d hooked it to her belt, hadn’t she?

The hand she’d clutched to her abdomen spasmed. She took a jerky step forward, toward the single door that broke up the otherwise blank stretch of wall.

An arm blocked her path. Gaara’s.

“Wait for Kankuro to open the door.” Gaara fixed Sakura with those eyes that would never stop being eerie no matter how good he became or how sincerely he repented. “And don’t go into the cell until he gives you the all clear.”

Was _not going into the cell at all_ an option?

Sakura blinked, and one of the guards unlocked and opened the door. She blinked again, and Kankuro disappeared inside. Another blink, and he was back in the hallway, gesturing Sakura forward.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

“Sakura?”

Who’d spoken to her? She couldn’t tell.

Her hand trembled. Her side hurt as badly as if the wound were fresh, as if she’d only been skewered an hour ago.

A hand wrapped around her wrist, peeling hers away from her abdomen. Thick calluses, short nails. The hand could’ve been attached to anyone here, but it was attached to Temari.

“Sakura? Do you need to leave?”

“No,” Sakura said. “No, I’m fine.”

She’d already said that, hadn’t she?

Sakura slipped out of Temari’s hold, bit by bit, wrist then palm then fingers, and stepped after Kankuro into the cell.

It was a one-person cell, and so barely fit the five people inside of it: Gaara, Kankuro, Sakura, Temari, and the person on the cot, hooked to an IV, hands in casts and ankles cuffed to the cot’s legs.

Sakura’s eyes trailed from those mangled hands—

_Gaara had to break his hands._

—to the lacerated, sunburnt arms, to the shoulders peeking out from the sleeveless robe, to that sun-browned throat to that eternal face to the eyes, eyes that were far worse than Gaara’s blinking up at Sakura like they’d only last met yesterday, like it was perfectly natural for them to meet here.

If she broke him up into individual parts, then he wasn’t real. The pieces of him were just labels on an anatomy chart.

 _Broke_ his hands. Not splintered. Bone. Not wood.

His chest rose, fell, rose again.

He blinked, and his eyes didn’t click as though made of glass.

“Chiyo’s little tagalong,” said the thing on the cot. “My, how you’ve grown.”

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

Sakura channeled enough chakra into her fist to level a small building. This wasn’t about breaking his jaw; this was about pounding his skull into fucking _dust_.

Her right wrist was caught before her momentum could carry her forward, and, instinctively, she spun and turned her left fist on the person holding her back.

That one was caught, too, by someone else.

Sakura looked right, then left. Gaara had caught her first, and Temari had stopped her other fist before it could touch her brother.

Sakura locked her muscles. She could fling them both off of her, but she shouldn’t do that. This one grain of rationality had reasserted itself: _don’t hit your friends_.

Kankuro’d wedged himself between Sakura and the cot, and if she squinted, she could see the chakra strings dangling from his fingers. He was ready to physically walk Sakura out of this cell.

“Sakura,” said Kankuro, “don’t make me.”

Because he would. Just like Temari would break Sakura’s wrist or cut her tendons if it meant Gaara’s safety.

Akasuna no Sasori peered around Kankuro’s bulk, pretty eyes languid. _Bored_. Sakura wanted to break his neck even as she wanted to touch his skin to test it for herself, to feel it dent under her fingers and spring back with living elasticity.

“Your impulse control should have improved since we last met,” said Sasori, “but it seems it’s only degraded. I prefer to keep my expectations low, but I hadn’t thought that you would turn out to be _quite_ this much of a disappointment.”

“Be quiet,” said Gaara, in a voice Sakura hadn’t heard in years. The skin he touched shriveled as though it wanted to crawl off her body and away from him.

_No._

She wouldn’t cower. Not to anyone in this room.

Sakura pulled her voice up from where it’d dropped into her stomach.

Said, “Why did you bring me here?”

“Because I asked for you,” said Sasori, like it was obvious.

Everyone else in the room made the silent, unanimous decision to ignore him.

“If we let you go,” Gaara said to Sakura, lax grip belying what he would definitely do to her should she lash out, “will you attack again?”

Sakura’s old wound throbbed. She remembered how she’d healed it while the blade was still inside of her. Remembered the blank doll's eyes that’d met hers over the blade’s shaft.

“No,” said Sakura. “I won’t attack anyone in this room.”

And just like that, Gaara let her go. Temari held on, though, held on until Gaara gave her a look over Sakura’s head.

Gaara’d held Sakura loosely right before he let her go, but his initial grip had been tight. Temari’s had been tighter. They’d probably squeezed bruises onto Sakura’s wrists.

Later. Later, she’d panic over nearly attacking a foreign Kage.

“Yeah,” said Kankuro, crossing his arms, although Sakura wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant he’d dissolved his chakra strings. “Okay. Let’s get the volatile kunoichi the hell _away_ from the person who tried to stab her to death, huh?”

_Person._

“He’s not a person,” Sakura croaked.

Gaara turned sharply toward Sakura, but she paid him little attention. Her eyes were pinned to Akasuna no Sasori’s face, still as pretty as a doll’s in spite of the fact that he apparently no longer _was_ one.

“—Should be used to people trying to stab her to death,” Temari was saying. “Fuck, Sakura, what’s your problem? If we’d known you’d do this, we wouldn’t’ve taken you to see him right off.”

“We’re also to blame,” said Gaara. “We should have prepared for this eventuality.”

Sasori frowned. Thunderously.

“I said that I wanted to speak with the girl, and you agreed,” Sasori said, and his tone was ugly, guttural as it’d been when he’d hidden inside the Hiruko puppet. “How long do you intend to make me wait, _Kazekage_?”

Right. Sasori hated waiting. Sakura remembered that about him.

She remembered a lot of things.

“You'll wait for as long as I deem it necessary,” said Gaara, and exited the cell without further comment. Temari pressed her hand to the small of Sakura’s back, careful of another outburst, and nudged her out after Gaara.

“Seriously,” Temari said to Sasori just as Kankuro shut the door behind them. “I’m still advocating that we leave you here to rot.”

From within, Sasori scoffed.

Kankuro activated the locks, and Sakura’s innards unraveled, just like that.

Shit. _Shit_. What the _hell_ was this?

Kankuro gave Sakura a long look.

“How many explanations do we owe you?” he asked.

“Plenty,” said Sakura. Her voice was finally steady, but the tremor in her vocal cords had only migrated to her hands. She clenched them. “But I’ll take them one at a time.”

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

The Kazekage invited Sakura to dine in his office.

He was very courteous about it, too, providing her with a most inoffensive meal: white rice, miso soup, and black bean tea. He could’ve just as easily offered her some of Suna’s more, er, _adventurous_ dining options—gizzard, salted tongue, _scorpion meat_ —and forced her to choose between insulting him with her refusal, or insulting him with her triggered gag reflex.

As it stood, Sakura couldn’t find her appetite, and every time she lifted a bit of rice to her mouth, she found herself dropping it back into the bowl.

What she wanted to ask was:

_How is he alive?_

_Why did he want to speak to **me**?_

_Why the **hell** didn’t you warn me? _

She started with:

“Tell me how you found him.”

A look passed from sibling to sibling, rippling across their faces before settling on Kankuro.

Kankuro said, “We almost didn’t. Find him, I mean.”

Gaara’s desk had been cleared to serve as a makeshift dining table. The wood was scarred in some places and buffed smooth in others. _Blades_ , Sakura thought. _Blades, and sand_. How many Kazekage had tipped this desk over to create a makeshift shield? 

Gaara wouldn't ever have to do that, of course. He came with his own shield, built in. 

Sakura asked Kankuro, “What does that mean, exactly?”

Kankuro shrugged with one shoulder. “Means what it sounds like. Not to undersell my abilities or anything, but it’s pure luck that I even caught his trail.”

Temari picked up Kankuro’s narrative while he paused to inhale his food. “Gaara was meeting with the daimyo in a civilian city. Neutral ground, you know? Someone heard there were elite ninja in town and approached our escort. Guy made such a fuss, Kankuro and I came to see him personally just to shut him up.”

“I feel sorry for him,” said Sakura, thinking of how Kankuro and Temari could be when they were irritated. “Genuinely.”

Kankuro snorted, and Temari’s mouth twitched. “No kidding. So, this guy comes to us, says his pal’s missing. Addicts, both of them, and it wasn’t out of character for the guy’s friend to drop off the map for days at a time, but the guy insisted that time this was different. His friend was getting better, he said. Hadn’t caused trouble for weeks, hadn’t even touched a drop of sweet sake.”

“People fall off the wagon all the time, though,” said Sakura, wondering if she could blame her deadened appetite on Gaara, sitting across from her and methodically slaughtering a cut of raw liver.

She thought of Sasori, of how dead his eyes looked even now that they’d reverted to organic material—the ciliary body, the vitreous, the retina—rather than glass. How had he even _seen_ with _two_ _glass eyes_? What had he _done_ to himself; what kind of person did you need to _be_ to transfer your consciousness into unfeeling lumber?

No. No, the raw liver wasn’t the problem.

“That’s what we told him,” said Temari, heedless of Sakura’s private little spiral. “But he wouldn’t let it go, so we followed him to where he’d last seen his wayward pal.”

“That was stupid of you,” said Gaara, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin. “It could’ve been a trap.”

“No shit,” said Kankuro. Temari kicked him under the table.

“Yeah, we know, and we were prepared for that eventuality. If it _were_ a trap, we could’ve neutralized him before he got to you, Gaara.” Temari planted her elbow on Gaara’s desk, returning her attention to Sakura. “But it wasn’t a trap, and when we got there—his apartment, and before you ask, no apparent signs of forced entry—Kankuro felt it.”

“Sasori-sama’s chakra signature,” Kankuro said. He saw the look on Sakura’s face and nodded. “Yeah. Temari wouldn’t’ve recognized it, but I did.” Right. Because Temari hadn’t met either Akatsuki, had she? “I’m no sensor type, but it’s pretty strong. I’m surprised you didn’t feel it on your way down, Sakura.”

 _But I did_ , thought Sakura, exquisitely conscious of that old wound. _I just didn’t want to_.

“He picked someone who shouldn’t’ve been missed, but this one was. That's his poor luck.” Temari propped her chin on her fist. “The three of us chased the little shit halfway across the desert. He nearly made it to River Country, and if he’d crossed the border, we would’ve been fucked. Foreign Kage crossing their border unannounced? Might as well tell them that we’re annexing their country; surrender and we’ll just force you into slave labor instead of killing you outright.”

River Country. Sakura wondered if he’d wanted to revisit the scene of his death. Maybe he’d just wanted out of Wind Country.

Sakura put down her chopsticks. Laced her fingers.

“He only ever wanted the best for his collection,” Sakura said, remembering how he’d offered to make her his puppet. Had he meant to _flatter_ her? “But that would’ve drawn too much attention. This missing man—he was practice, wasn’t he? He wasn’t—alive when you found him and Sasori. Was he?”

“Sasori’d already drained the blood out of his body when we found them,” said Temari, and Sakura’s empty stomach pitched. “I told you how Gaara broke his hands, right? That was the only way to stop him from getting away without killing him.”

Because what was a puppet master without his hands? And being human, Sasori wouldn’t’ve had a hollow in his chest through which he could thread more string.

“You want him alive so you can find out how he came to be alive in the first place.” Not a question, and Sakura got three synchronized nods for her trouble. “Okay. Then—”

Sakura squeezed her hands together, and her knuckles popped.  

 _Control_.

“Why am I here?”

Kankuro and Temari both looked at Gaara, who pushed his cleared plate out of the way and stacked his hands on top of his desk, mirroring Sakura's pose.

“You heard him say that he wanted to speak with you; that wasn’t just to unnerve you. He was being genuine. He intimated that he’d be more cooperative if he were given the chance to see you once again.”

Sakura’s mouth popped open, again. At this rate, she’d catch flies.

“And you didn’t tell him to go to hell?” Sakura asked.

Gaara’s eyes, still as bruised and exhausted as if Shukaku never left him, as if he’d never learned to sleep, flicked to his desk, and then back to Sakura’s face. He traced his finger over an old gouge in the wood.

“You held your own against him—an elite shinobi and one of Suna’s greatest war criminals—when you were a fifteen-year-old chunin who’d only just begun to hone her natural talents. Tell me, Sakura. Do you really believe yourself beneath his notice?”

“Well,” Sakura muttered, “when you put it like that.”

But that wasn’t all there was to it, was there?

“Sorry for the entirely absent warning, by the way,” said Kankuro. “We figured that seeing it first would be just as bad as hearing it first.”

“Like pulling out a splinter, huh?” Sakura asked, wry, and Kankuro had the grace to duck his head.

“Something like that,” he said.

“I’m to blame, too.” Sakura bowed her head to Gaara, but the gesture was really meant for them all. “A kunoichi shouldn’t allow her emotions to overcome her in stressful situations. I’m better than what you saw in that cell.”

“Yeah,” said Temari, reaching out to poke at Sakura’s cheek until she sat up straight to swat ineffectually at her. “We know. I’m sorry, too. You really should’ve behaved better, but I get that Sasori’s—special.”

 _Special like herpes,_ Sakura thought. Turned out that neither ever really went away.

“So.” Sakura tossed a napkin on top of her tray of food, knowing that lunch was a lost cause. “What else do you want me for?”

Gaara and his siblings just looked at her, unsurprised. They knew she wasn’t stupid.

And in the end, it was Gaara who enlightened her.

“Sasori’s promised his cooperation under a specific set of conditions, but we can’t take his sincerity at face value. There’s no guarantee that he won’t lie when questioned. His will is strong, and we can only guess at what we’ll have to do in order to break it. Your medical prowess is unrivaled, Sakura.”

Gaara’s eyes were exhausted, yes, but they were also entirely dispassionate.

“You’re the only one who can bring him back from what we may have to do to him.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura fails to write a letter home, Gaara caps his evening with a philosophical discussion, and Sasori gets choked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emetophobia warning for this chapter.

Sakura’s temporary living quarters did not come equipped with a balcony, but they were situated on the top floor. Sakura boosted herself out of her bedroom’s one window, climbed onto the roof, and flattened a piece of paper against her thigh. The sun was setting, but it still put off enough light to write by.

_~~Kakashi-sen~~ _

_Hokage-sama,_

_I’ve arrived in one piece and am being treated well, so you can tell everyone to stop worrying. Naruto will want to see my letter for himself, though, so please show it to him as soon as possible. I don’t need to remind you of what happened the last time you “forgot” to let Naruto know that I’d made it safely to my destination. Speaking of which, you really ought to repair that hole; it’s a security risk, and it lets in an awful draft. _

_~~If Sasuke sends me a letter while I’m gone, please write him to let him know that I’m~~ _

Sakura placed her pen between her teeth and bit gently down, debating with herself. Let Sasuke know what, exactly? Kakashi couldn’t tell Sasuke that Sakura was on a solo mission in Suna; that was classified information. Maybe she could ask one of her friends to forward Sasuke’s letters to her.

Sakura still hadn’t settled on a course of action when an unnatural wind stirred her hair. Swiftly, she folded her unfinished letter into halves and then quarters, tucking both it and her pen into the pouch strapped to her belt before looking over her shoulder.

The particles of sand that hallmarked Gaara’s teleportation technique were still swirling around him in lazy circles. From where he was standing, the setting sun should’ve hit his eyes at full force, but he didn’t even squint.

Had Gaara been looking for her, or had he come up to the roof for some privacy, unaware that it was occupied? A little resentfully, Sakura thought that he could do what he wanted regardless of his intent. It _was_ his house.

“Good evening, Kazekage-sama.” Sakura smiled neutrally, wondering how much of her letter he’d seen before she’d put it away. “Was there something you needed from me? Or did you want some privacy? I can leave—”

“I have a question,” said Gaara. He did not elaborate.

_All right, then._

“Shoot,” said Sakura, and because looking at him from this angle was putting a crick in her neck, patted the roof. “Do you want to sit with me?”

Gaara stepped forward and settled down on the spot indicated. Sakura clasped her hands together on top of her folded legs and projected attentiveness. The attentiveness wasn’t an act; she really wanted to know what kind of question could compel a busy Kage to come seek her out.

“I don’t understand you,” Gaara said at length. “Most ninja are naturally predisposed toward violence, and you’re no exception. Even outside of combat situations, you tend to react violently to stressors.”

“Erm, yeah.” Sakura flexed her hands, trying to shake off the sense memory of cartilage breaking under her knuckles. “I guess you could say that I’ve got a bit of a temper.

To Gaara’s credit, he didn’t visibly react to Sakura’s understatement. “You’re violent,” he repeated, “and yet you appear to be put off by torture. Explain.”

Again, Sakura thought that no one could ever accuse Gaara of beating around the bush.

And she found that she had to think her explanation through before she gave it, rather than responding to Gaara’s confusion with a flippant dismissal. He’d asked his question seriously, and she owed him a serious answer.

Opening her ungloved hands in her lap and tracing all her scars and calluses with her eyes, Sakura said, halting, “Torture’s—different from other kinds of violence. Breaking someone’s jaw—that’s quick, and there’s nothing much to it. The act’s entirely physical. Torture, though? Torture break’s a person’s mind, and, I don’t know, just the idea of going that deep, going to places that no one’s meant to touch, and deliberately crossing someone else’s wires? It makes me—uneasy. I don’t like it.”

“So, psychological violence disturbs you more than physical violence,” Gaara surmised, and after twisting her mouth from one side to another in indecision, Sakura nodded. “I agree with your evaluation of the key differences between psychological and physical violence up to a point—if you kill someone quickly enough, they may die before they can feel any pain. A quick death can be merciful, but torture, by definition, never is.”

And Gaara would know all about the best ways to kill someone quickly—or slowly—wouldn’t he?

“However.” Gaara echoed Sakura’s pose, opening his palms in his lap, and Sakura saw more than felt the sand particles that’d gathered again on her skin flake off and spiral into the air. “Say you miscalculate the force you put into your attack. Say you never meant to kill your opponent in the first place; perhaps all you wanted was to injure them badly enough to get away before they could hurt _you_. Perhaps you break their legs, or damage their spinal cord. A shinobi’s livelihood hinges on their ability to get around quickly and easily. If you were to take that from them, would that not qualify as its own form of torture?”

“Um, wow.” Uneasy—both with the clinical way he spoke and the confusion that twisted her gut—Sakura laughed. It was not a natural laugh. “Philosophical discussions before bedtime. Is this normal for you?”

“I don’t have anything better to do at the moment,” Gaara conceded, and Sakura saw that the sand he’d pulled out of her hair and off her skin now sat in glittering piles on his open palms. “And I’m very bored.”

Did accepting a guestroom in the Kazekage’s personal residence mean humoring his ennui? Maybe Sakura should’ve insisted on staying at a hotel.  

“I hate to disappoint you, Kazekage-sama, truly, but I’m afraid that I don’t have a ready answer for your question. I’ll have to take a raincheck.” Agitated, Sakura scraped her damp hair out of her eyes; she’d showered less than fifteen minutes ago, and what with the way the temperature dropped rapidly as night approached, the desert hadn’t had the chance to suck all the excess moisture out of her hair.

“Enjoy that shower,” Temari had said, looking far too amused at Sakura’s expense. “It’ll be your last for the week. If you want to get cleaned up at any point during the next six days, you’ll have to make do with sponge baths. Consider yourself lucky: if you weren’t the Kazekage’s personal guest, you’d only be permitted to shower once every _two_ weeks.”

 _That’s water rationing for you,_ Sakura thought grumpily, glancing sidelong at Gaara. She wondered how many showers the Kazekage was permitted. Probably five per day at minimum.

Why was he still here, anyway? Sakura’d expected Gaara to disappear in a swirl of sand as soon as she’d confessed that she couldn’t answer his unsettling question. Yet here he sat, sifting little wavelets of chakra through the sand on his palms.

Before her brain could quite catch up to her mouth, she said, “The first time I had to set a broken bone, I threw up.”

 _That_ dragged Gaara’s attention away from his little mounds of sand. He didn’t say anything, but stared unblinkingly at Sakura until she continued speaking out of sheer desperation.

“It was— _hum_ , six years ago, I think? Seven? Anyway, I’d been learning under Tsunade-shisho for a while, and she decided that I was ready to try healing broken bones. Properly, I mean. Up until then, I’d been practicing on animals and dummies, and now she wanted me to try healing a person. But before I could heal the break, I had to set the pieces—can’t heal a break if the ends aren’t touching, you know? So, I was standing over my patient, and I took one look at their arm—the way the bone stuck out of a gash, the little flaps of skin around the wound, and I just—lost it.”

“What did the Fifth do?” Gaara asked, and, encouraged, Sakura managed to steady her voice.

“I expected her to tear me a new one, you know? That would’ve been entirely in character, and honestly, I would’ve deserved it. A medic can’t lose their composure; they need to maintain it for their own sake as well as their patient’s. But Tsunade-shisho—she didn’t even yell at me. She set the break herself, and once I’d finished puking out the window, she made me rinse my mouth out with water. And then I finished the job.” Sakura laughed, and this time, it was natural, because once she’d finished vomiting, she’d done perfectly. “Turned out the first time Tsunade-shisho’d performed field surgery, she nearly threw up all over her patient’s slit gut.”

Most people laughed at this point in the story, or at least expressed their shock that the Fifth Hokage had once been a green newbie the same as everyone else. But Gaara just swirled his sand, and Sakura’s laughter turned edgy again.

“I guess.” Sakura rubbed her neck, then hissed when her fingers touched sunburn. Damn; she always forgot to apply sunblock to the back of her neck. “I guess you think that was weak of me. Reacting like that to an injury.”

“Back then, I _would_ have thought you were weak.” Gaara’s sand drifted up off his palms, twisting into a miniature dust devil. “Now? Now…I think you were lucky, to have been unused to seeing such severe injuries. Even in a world like ours, children shouldn’t be exposed to excessive violence.”

Pleasantly surprised, Sakura smiled automatically—and then the smile turned self-deprecating. “Funny you should say that. I mean, between the Chunin Exams and my team’s first serious mission—Wave Country, did Naruto ever tell you about it?—I’d already seen worse.”

“Zabuza the Swordsman,” said Gaara. So, Naruto _had_ told him. That would save Sakura the trouble of exposition, at least.

“Yeah.” Sakura watched the dust devil gain momentum, and then collapse, and then lift again. “He’d lost use of both arms, so he borrowed someone’s kunai—Naruto’s?—held it in his teeth as easy as anything, and took off that awful businessman's head. Probably for the best that I wasn’t watching too closely.” She’d been too busy having a breakdown over what she’d thought was Sasuke’s _corpse_.

Sakura pulled her legs against her chest and draped her arms over her knees. “It’s just. Six years ago, I threw up over a broken arm, and today, earlier, in that cell—I took one look at Sasori, and all I could think about was how good it’d feel to crush his skull.”

“I can empathize.” Startled, Sakura looked away from the tiny dust devil and into Gaara’s face. She couldn’t read it. “Sasori and his partner kidnapped me and contributed to the biju extraction that would’ve cost me my life had Chiyo-baasama not sacrificed hers. They attacked my friends and endangered my village. I never got the chance to kill Deidara, so why should I hesitate to execute his partner? If I didn’t need him for information, he’d already be dead.”

It’d been a long time since Sakura had last heard Gaara speak so casually about wanting to kill someone. His face was calm—truly calm in a way that reached his eyes—but his fingers twitched every few seconds, and the dust devil spun in tighter and tighter circles. Sakura wondered if she should draw his attention to it.

“But,” said Gaara, “if I did that…if I killed Akasuna no Sasori in cold blood…I know that I would enjoy myself far too much.”  

So, he still struggled with the person he used to be. Life minus one homicidal tailed beast couldn’t undo years and years of psychological trauma.

“You had to break his hands,” Sakura said gently, not wanting Gaara to spiral, not where she could see it. They were friends, if only by Naruto’s proxy, but she didn’t know Gaara well enough to deserve to see him vulnerable. “With your sand, right?”

“Yeah. Even then, Kankuro had to paralyze him with a nonlethal poison. I could’ve dealt with him faster if I’d had the luxury of killing him, but I couldn’t do that. Even in his weakened state, he was good.” Gaara said this ungrudgingly, clearly respectful of a worthy opponent, even one who’d done him so much wrong. “Good, but not good enough. He was human, and unused to his living flesh. That worked in our favor.”

“That’s why you’re hesitant to torture him.” Sakura watched the dust devil collapse; this time, Gaara didn’t resurrect it. “He’s dehydrated, recovering from Kankuro’s poison, he’s had his hands broken—if you torture him right off the bat, the shock just might kill him.”

“We have to wait to torture him,” Gaara agreed, “but we don’t have the luxury of time.”

“You think…” Sakura swallowed, trying to coax saliva into her mouth. The sun had fallen off the horizon’s edge a while ago. “You don’t think that Sasori’s the first. Or the last.”  

“No,” said Gaara, “I don’t.”

Sakura bowed her head. Locked her fingers. Stretched out her legs so that her feet jutted over the roof’s lip and into empty air.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll speak with him, and heal him if it comes to that. But only because I like you guys. I wouldn’t do this for Iwa, you know?”

Lie. If it came down to international safety, she would have done this for anyone else. It’d just be…easier for her if she thought of the friends she’d be helping.

“Flattering,” said Gaara, exquisitely deadpan, and Sakura snorted before she could stop herself. “Thank you, Sakura.”

“It’s nothing.” Sakura grabbed the back of her neck, forgetting her sunburn, and hissed. “ _Ouch._ ”

Sakura had begun to coat the sunburn on her nape in healing chakra, enjoying a silence that’d turned comfortable, when Gaara broke the quiet.

“You said that Sasori’s not a person.”

_Shit._

Is _that_ what he’d wanted to say this whole time? _Way to put your foot in it, Haruno._

“That’s different!” Sakura stuttered, and it was only her perfect chakra control that allowed her to heal herself and stumble through her excuses at the same time. “Gaara-sama, you’re not a m—”

_Both feet._

“Sasori’s a _psychopath_ , I mean, clinically, I think he could be diagnosed—”

_Both feet and both legs._

“Suna’s elders made you into what you were,” Sakura rasped, blinking rapidly to clear the nascent tears of frustration. “Sasori didn’t have a demon. He was just a normal human who chose his own path. But you’re right: I shouldn’t have dehumanized him. Because from what I’ve seen, people are the real monsters.”

Gaara’s pale skin was bleached of what little color it had as night deepened. He didn’t _look_ hurt or insulted, but that didn’t mean much, did it?

“You really do hate him,” Gaara said. Not a question.

 _Hate_. Hatred was a waste of emotional resources; she knew that. Hatred had bred so much strife in the lives of those she loved.

But.

“Yeah.” Sakura wanted to break eye contact, but even if Gaara hadn’t thought her weak for vomiting when she was an untried child, he would definitely think less of her for not looking him in the face when she said, “I really do.”

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

“Hey, Sakura. Ready to go?”

Sakura’s shift at Suna Hospital had ended a while ago, but then the nurse she’d been paired with for a minor surgery had asked her a question about her technique, and while she knew she’d be cutting it close, she couldn’t just dismiss someone who wanted to improve themselves through refined knowledge.

Well. At least Kankuro was late to pick her up. They could share the blame.

“One minute, Kankuro-san.” Kankuro just shrugged at her and made himself comfortable in a slump against the breakroom’s wall. Sakura smiled in thanks, then transferred her smile to the nurse. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll be back tomorrow—my shift starts at nine in the morning, same as today—so if you have any more questions, I’ll be happy to answer them then.”

“Ah, of course. I understand, Sakura-sama.” The nurse bowed, and Sakura bowed back; treating the nurse like an equal wouldn’t offset the squirming discomfort that being called _Sakura-sama_ triggered, but it was all she could short of telling him not to call her that, which would be rude in itself. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

“You too,” Sakura said through her teeth.

_A **pleasant** afternoon? Not a chance. _

Kankuro waited until they were well on their way to the prison to say, “Do respectful honorifics give you hives or something, Sakura- _sama_?”

“Please don’t _ever_ call me that again. I mean, ever.” Habitually, Sakura went to push her hair back, only to realize she’d never unclipped it from the short ponytail she liked to wear it in whenever she was on medical duty. Shaking it loose and stowing the clip, she said, “And, no, they don’t. But up until a few years ago, I wasn’t anybody important. I don’t come from a prestigious clan, and I’m not a reincarnated demigod. I appreciate being treated politely, but I’d rather not be kowtowed to on account of who my master is.”

“You really think it’s about who your master is? Like, for real?” Kankuro shook his head, and his black hood swayed. “And here I thought you were smart for a Leaf.”

“You’re lucky you’re the Kazekage’s brother.” Sakura narrowed her eyes; if onlookers rightly assumed she was glaring their precious _Kankuro-sama_ to death, she could pass it off as squinting in the sun. “Or else I’d hit you for that.”

“I wish you would,” said Kankuro, grinning. The purple greasepaint made it look at once sinister and comical. “Really, though. You should spar with me while you’re here. Temari, too; I know she’d love to take you on.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Sakura, smiling at him before facing front again. Kankuro was taking backroads to the prison, but he really needn’t have bothered. Sakura could come and go to the prison as often as she liked, and no one would think anything of it.

Because, speaking of Temari, it’d been Temari who informed Sakura that Suna’s general populace thought she was here to oversee improvements in the hospital’s administration as well as reforms in how Suna’s prison system treated its sick or injured inmates. Most of Suna’s residents didn’t even know that Sasori was alive, let alone marking time in their high security prison.

Sasori’s cell block looked the same as yesterday: lined with ANBU and jonin guards who probably would’ve traded another great war for Sasori duty. Or maybe Sakura was just projecting.

She stopped at the hallway’s mouth. Took a breath.

“You gonna handle this better than yesterday?” Kankuro asked her, quiet. His low tone was nothing more than a courtesy, just like the ANBU and jonin pretending that they weren’t listening in did so out of courtesy.

Sakura started walking again. She nodded at the ANBU posted closest to the cell’s door.

“Open it,” she said.

The ANBU did. Kankuro followed Sakura into the cell.

Sasori sat up on the cot, crossing his wrists in his lap. Those clubbed casts would’ve made anyone else look helpless.  

Even without his chakra strings at his disposal, Sakura knew better than to think of Sasori as _helpless_.

“Ah.” Sasori looked from Sakura to Kankuro. “Good cop and bad cop, is it? And which one of you is which?”

“Not so much good and bad, Sasori-sama, as bad and worse.” Kankuro shut the door behind him—locking the two of them in with the monster—and settled against it in a deceptive slump.  

It bothered Sakura still, how young Sasori looked. From what Chiyo had said, Sasori had gone missing-nin twenty years prior to his return to kidnap the Kazekage. Adding that onto the age he’d looked, he would’ve been somewhere in his thirties when Sakura first met him. Which put him at about forty, now.

Creepy. But then, Sasori was _creepy_ personified, wasn’t he?

Sakura looked at the chair someone had placed at Sasori’s bedside. Pulled it back a foot or so. Sat in it. Crossed her legs.

“You look good,” she said to Sasori, “for a middle-aged man.”

Sasori blinked. “I exfoliate,” he said.

Kankuro muffled his laugh in his fist. Even Sakura’s mouth twitched before she remembered herself. _Don’t laugh at the bad guy’s jokes._

_Wait._

_Sasori can **joke**? _

Maybe not. Maybe Sakura was so tightly wound that she’d imagined it, as well as Kankuro’s laughter.

Sasori lifted one clubbed hand, and Sakura tensed. Clumsily—and how odd was _that_ , to see a Sasori excised of his grace—he gestured to Sakura’s face. No, not her face. Her forehead.

“That’s new,” he said.

Sakura’s fingers brushed her seal. She was used to people asking about it; a typical reaction was one of shock that someone her age had managed to awaken it already, followed by admiration at her prowess. Sasori looked neither shocked nor admiring, but then, Sasori was as expressive as the block of wood he’d once been carved from.

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice it yesterday,” she said.

And she _was_ surprised. Genuinely. Even fresh genin would have noticed and catalogued something as obvious as a Byakugo, even if they hadn’t the knowledge to classify it. Weakened state aside, an elite missing-nin would have noticed everything about Sakura the moment she stepped into his cell.

“Oh, I noticed.” Sasori re-crossed his wrists, and Sakura wondered how it felt for a shinobi, let alone a puppet master, to lose the use of their hands. “I was rather distracted, however, by your valiant attempt to bash my brains in.”

“Distracted, was it?” Sakura smiled, the twist as bitter as if she’d swallowed something sour. “Funny. You didn’t _look_ particularly concerned by my attempt on your life.”

“Talented as you are, girl, you were surrounded by a Kage and his elite personal guard. Between the three of them, I trusted that they’d manage to hold you back.” Sasori tilted his head, and the movement was all wrong. He still wasn’t used to the tendons in his neck, to the hinge of his jaw, was he? Not used to moving like a person. “How old were you when we fought?”

Not for the first time, Sakura wondered what the point of all this was. A glance spared for Kankuro confirmed that he was at as much of a loss as she was. Still, she answered Sasori.

“Fifteen,” she said, and couldn’t help the smirk if she’d tried. Because she’d had Chiyo, yes, but she’d held her own, too, and nothing and no one could take that from her.

“The same age that I was when I first walked away from this rotten village.” Sasori tilted his head to the other side, looking like nothing so much as a mechanical bird. “And how old are you now?”

Sakura uncrossed her legs. Crossed them again at a different angle.

“I just turned twenty,” she said.

“Five years, then,” said Sasori, slowly, as though thinking aloud, as though Sakura wasn’t a conversational partner so much as a sounding board, “and you’ve already built up enough chakra to awaken _that._ ”

“Actually,” said Sakura, straight faced, “I awakened my Byakugo when I was seventeen.”

Sasori’s eyes widened imperceptibly. Sakura took the muted expression for what it was: shock.

“Perhaps it’s for the best that I hadn’t the chance to make you my puppet,” said Sasori, eyelids resuming their usual droop. “It would have been a waste to kill someone who hadn’t yet reached their full potential.”

The moisture drained out of Sakura’s mouth. She had to swallow several times before she could speak.

“So, what you’re saying is, you’d make me a puppet _now_ given the chance.”

Sasori inclined his head. “You ought to be flattered.”

Sakura’s knuckles popped in their gloves. “Excuse the hell out of me if I don’t rush to send you a thank-you card.”

“Sakura.” Kankuro pushed off the door, hovering. “Say the word and we’re outta here.”

“That reminds me.” It was only when Sasori’s eyes crawled off of her and onto Kankuro that Sakura realized she’d clenched her fists. “I hadn’t thought that they would allow me to speak with you alone, and yet I still hoped that they would. What do they fear, do you think? That I’ll kill you, or that you’ll kill me?”

“Yeah, and what would you do, exactly?” Sakura laughed, but the sound stuttered. “Club me to death?”

Sasori met her eyes. He was human, but there was nothing human about his eyes.

“I can be creative,” he said.

The force with which Sakura surged to her feet knocked her chair onto its back. She had one knee planted on the cot and one hand wrapped around Sasori’s throat before Kankuro could stop her, and she pinned Sasori to the mattress like a bug to a mounted corkboard. The IV tipped over and landed with a teeth-rattling crash.  

“So,” she said, pumping her fingers, “can I.”

“Ah, _shit_ ,” Kankuro muttered.

Sasori’s pulse beat steadily against Sakura’s palm, gently hammering at the thin skin that cushioned his throat. His skin was warm, almost too warm, and Sakura thought he might be feverish. His windpipe felt the same as anyone else’s, and she knew she could crumple it like a straw.

“You’re really alive,” she said, mouth puckering around the words. “This isn’t a reanimation jutsu. It’s like you never died at all.”

Sasori lifted his chin, throat stretching against the cup of Sakura’s palm.

“As you can see,” he said.

Intellectually, she’d already known that Sasori was somehow flesh and blood, not dust and jutsu. But it was one thing to see, to be told, and quite another to feel.

Sakura strengthened her grip just enough, just tight enough to cut off Sasori’s air but not crush his windpipe.

“Did you do this to yourself?” she asked, and loosened her grip so Sasori could breathe again. “Was this some kind of failsafe?”

“Wrong question,” Sasori rasped.

Sakura cut off his air again. “Did you plan this yourself?” she repeated. Slackened her fingers.

“Wrong,” Sasori hissed, “ _question_.”

She’d do it. She could do it. Kankuro wasn’t stopping her, so she’d choke Sasori until he did, or until Sasori _asphyxiated_. Whichever came first.

Sakura blinked the red blur from her eyes.

 _Wrong question,_ he’d said.

Wrong, but _nearly_ correct. It was a matter of semantics.

Was _that_ how it was going to be? She had to ask her questions in a certain way, or he wouldn’t answer them at all? Was this a _game_? The red haze of her anger surged again, but she beat it back.

Sakura loosened her fingers until she wasn’t squeezing Sasori’s windpipe so much as resting her hand across it. She lined her next question up in her mouth, settling it behind her clenched teeth.

She said, “Did someone to whom you are not allied bring you back?”

Sasori smiled at her. It looked just like the smile he’d worn when he’d shoved a sword through her gut.

“Yes,” he said.

Sakura let him go. Climbed off the cot.

She was shaking.

“Why,” she said, “did you ask for me specifically?”

Sasori did not sit up.

“You’re interesting,” he said, “and I’m bored.”

_I don’t have anything better to do, and I’m very bored._

So, what? Was she here to entertain Suna-nin in their leisure time? What was she, a machine that responded to weird philosophical questions when someone fed her ten ryo and pushed a button?

Kankuro hovered a hand over her shoulder, but wisely didn’t touch her.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he said. “Or for this week. Shit.”

Sakura grabbed the chair and heaved it back into place. She felt Sasori’s stare like a bug burrowing under her skin.

“Enough for today, anyway,” she half-agreed, and looked on as Kankuro knocked his fist against the door and told the guards to open it back up.

Sakura glanced at the IV that she’d knocked over. Unlike the chair, she made no move to put it back into place.

Sasori propped himself up on one elbow. Living flesh and fading tan aside, he looked exactly the same as when Sakura first saw him, climbing out of Hiruko’s broken shell like something newly hatched.

“You’ll be back to continue our discussion, I trust,” said Sasori.

Slowly, giving her time to pull away, Kankuro circled her wrist with his fingers. His thumb pressed down hard on her slamming pulse. He’d drag her out of here on chakra strings if he had to; Sakura knew that.

Sasori wasn’t finished with her, huh?

_You’ll be back, I trust._

“You can count on that,” said Sakura.

Sasori nodded.

“Don’t keep me waiting.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kankuro's a snitch, Temari extols the virtues of dressing for one's environment, and Sakura stares down a floating eyeball.

The Kazekage was watering his cacti.

Sakura knew quite a bit about flowering plants and even more about herbs both medicinal and toxic, but she knew very little about cacti outside of their applicability to desert survival. As far as domesticated cacti were concern, she’d never seen the appeal in cultivating a living pincushion, but this was Suna, and daffodils wouldn’t thrive here.

Gaara spared Sakura and Kankuro a glance over his shoulder before returning his attention to the spiny potted plants that lined his office’s windowsill. The watering can he held was small and round and brassy, and someone had stuck a smiley faced sticker to it.

Sakura was still trying to guess which of the Kazekage’s siblings was responsible for the smiley face when Gaara asked, “How did it go?”

Hastily reviewing her lightly edited report of her visit to the prison, Sakura opened her mouth—

“She tried to choke him out,” Kankuro blurted.

—and shut it so fast that her front teeth clipped the tip of her tongue.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sakura hissed, only it came out as _thit_.

 _Now_ Gaara turned around, dangling the presumably emptied watering pot from his fingers.

“Are you okay?” he asked Sakura. His frown made it quite clear that he very much doubted that Sakura was okay at all, on any level, and that he was only asking out of courtesy. 

Temari was posted by the door, so Sakura couldn’t see her face from where she stood, but that didn’t matter, because her laughter probably carried all the way back to Konoha.

“I’m _fine_.” Sakura wondered what’d gone wrong with the universe between now and when she’d first met Gaara, if _he_ could look at _her_ like _she_ was unstable. Then, remembering herself, and feeling badly about the private jab at Gaara’s sanity, she tacked on, “Erm, thanks for asking, though. Kazekage-sama. Sir.” 

At any rate, Gaara appeared not to care one way or the other about Sakura’s slip. He set the watering can down on the windowsill, approached his desk, and took a seat before gesturing at Sakura and Kankuro to follow suit.

Sakura sat, waiting for Kankuro to do the same. Once he had, she brought her foot down on top of his toes, applying enough pressure to pinch but not to hurt.

Kankuro scowled at her. Sakura smiled back. He jerked his foot out from under hers and kicked her in the shin.

Gaara cleared his throat, and Sakura and Kankuro both jumped like guilty children.

Eyeing them both narrowly, Gaara asked, “What’s this about choking Sasori?”

Sakura wanted to sink down in her seat. She didn’t. But she _wanted_ to.  

“I lost my temper,” Sakura said, and looked Gaara full in the face while she said it.

“Again,” Kankuro added. Sakura raised her fist, only to drop it when Gaara fixed her with the Glare of Doom.  

“You can’t do that,” Gaara said, turning his glare down a notch or ten. “I understand that the two of you have history, Sakura, but you need to keep a cool head. I attributed your first outburst to shock, and I won’t hold your actions against you, but this can’t become a pattern.”

Sakura’s stomach felt full and hot with shame, the way it did whenever Tsunade was disappointed in her. She badly wanted to squirm.

“In Sakura’s defense,” said Kankuro, “Sasori-sama baited her. She was doing fine up ’til then.”

Sakura gaped at Kankuro. What with the way he’d thrown her under the bus, she hadn’t thought that he would turn around and defend her behavior.

Gaara didn’t look especially impressed with Kankuro’s explanation, but then, Gaara never looked much of anything aside from _tired_ and _bored_ (intensities may vary).

“Every time Sakura walks into that cell,” said Gaara, “she’s stepping onto a battlefield, and Sasori is her opponent. Their fight may not be physical,” _or shouldn’t be_ , was the pointed implication, “but she should still treat each encounter as though lives are on the line. If a shinobi allows themselves to be baited, then they’re giving their opponent an opening. Sakura, you should know this.”

But Sakura _did_ know. That was the problem. She knew better, but she’d still slipped up. Twice in a goddamn row.

With effort, Sakura unclenched her teeth. “I know,” she said, voicing the mantra that clanged around in her head. _I know, I know, I know_. “I apologize. But—Kazekage-sama, I don’t mean to downplay my mistake, but I’d also like to point out that Sasori didn’t cooperate with me until after I’d physically attacked him.”

“Sakura. Do you think—truly—that Sasori cooperated with you because he was afraid of what you’d do to him otherwise?” Gaara was asking Sakura a question, but he said it like he already knew the answer.

 _Sakura_ knew the answer, and it didn’t come to her like a revelation because she’d known it from the moment she’d wrapped her fingers around Sasori’s throat and felt his pulse beat steadily beneath her palm.

She’d known it when he’d smiled up at her.

“No.” Sakura could still feel that awful, steady pulse, sense memory betraying her. “He wasn’t afraid of what I’d do to him.”

“Physical bullying won’t work on Sasori,” Gaara confirmed. “My brother and the other guards could have intervened at any moment. You’re strong, Sakura, but I have faith in their abilities to restrain you should it come down to that—and Sasori’s very aware of the fact that you aren’t permitted to do him any lasting harm.”

“Not to dismiss your people’s abilities, Kazekage-sama, but I think it was more than that.” Sakura pressed her hands together, hoping that the pressure would numb the lingering sensation of Sasori’s pulse, of Sasori’s skin that’d been so hot even through her gloves. “Even if Kankuro-san and the others hadn’t been there, I don’t think Sasori would’ve been moved by physical threats. He just held out until I asked the right question. And then he…smiled at me.”

Sakura scrubbed her palms gently together, creating friction, trying to be discreet as she could in a room full of eagle-eyed Suna-nin. She wanted to wash her hands until her skin cracked and blistered. She wanted to erase Sasori’s smile from her memory.

The thing about Sasori was that his emotions were dulled, hollow, only skin deep. Usually he looked bored, and sometimes he looked pissed. During their battle, he’d only ever smiled after he’d done something to hurt Sakura or Chiyo.

“What was the right question?”

Sakura only realized that she’d been staring at her hands when she found that she had to look up. Temari had pushed off the wall and come to stand beside Sakura, lightly gripping the back of her chair, knuckles brushing Sakura’s spine.

“What question did you ask him?” Temari rapped out, impatient. “What did Sasori say, Sakura?”

“Temari,” said Gaara, but his sister just waved him and his ominous tone off like she was flicking a fly.

Times sure had changed. Sakura’s first glimpse of the Suna siblings was still fixed in her brain, crystalized. Gaara, hanging from a tree branch like a bat and doling out casual death threats. Kankuro and Temari, cowering.

Usually, Sakura could find it in herself to be happy for them, for their repaired family unit. Right now, all she could feel was the slow burn of frustrated rage.

“I’m sorry for pushing her, Gaara, but we’re strapped for time! Sakura.” Temari tightened her grip on the chair’s back—the wood creaked—and bent into Sakura’s space. “What did you ask Sasori, and what did he say to you?”

“Um.” Kankuro leaned forward in his seat, wiggling his fingers. “I was there too, you know, and I wasn’t blinded by rage, either. Sakura asked Sasori-sama if he’d brought himself back. Like, if he’d had a failsafe in place. If he’d preserved his original body somewhere. Right, Sakura? Is that what you were thinking?”

“I wanted to eliminate the least likely possibility right off.” It was funny. Rather than wanting to squirm away from Kankuro and Temari, Sakura found that their nearness—their body heat, the way their voices vibrated in Sakura’s chest, even the smell of their sweat—grounded her and allowed her to recall the details of her confrontation with Sasori quite clinically. “Um. His body—it’s fully formed and, near as I can tell, fully functional. But Sasori’s puppet body contained his heart, which he obviously would’ve removed from his organic body. Kankuro-san, after we retrieved the Sasori puppet, what did you do with the heart?”

“The heart?” Kankuro’d tossed his hood back upon entering the Kazekage’s office building, and now he scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I destroyed it.”

Sakura nodded, a little frantically. Temari and Kankuro kept her grounded, yes, but she was still shaky. God, would this happen every time she went to see Sasori? Would she ever grow desensitized to his presence?

“So, I doubt it’s Sasori’s original body, but it’s still _his_ body. His eyes and skin look normal, so I don’t think it’s edo tensei.” Sakura looked to Gaara for confirmation. “Right?”

“We ran DNA tests the day after we brought him to Suna,” said Gaara. “It’s really him, not just his soul implanted in someone else’s body.”

Sakura nodded, then wrinkled her nose. Speaking of the Sasori puppet—

“You don’t think it’s creepy?” she asked Kankuro, who just blinked at her, so she clarified, “Owning the Sasori puppet when the real thing’s alive and well? I mean, it was _already_ creepy.”

“It…doesn’t really bother me,” Kankuro decided, scratching his jaw. “I mean, I already used the puppet against Sasori-sama when he was an edo tensei, so this isn’t all that different. And, yeah.” A grin crawled over his mouth. “It _is_ pretty goddamn creepy by itself, but if my opponents are too distracted by how eerie the puppet looks to fight me properly, well, that works in my favor, doesn’t it?”

So, Kankuro’s ghoulish taste in puppets was a deliberate aesthetic choice. It figured.

“Hey!” Temari slapped the back of Sakura’s chair, and Sakura fought the instinct to lash out. “You two freaks can bond over Kankuro’s creepy dolls later, okay?” Kankuro made an indignant noise, but Temari ignored him. “Was that the right question, Sakura, or did you have to ask Sasori something else?”

“Right, sorry.” Sakura focused on Temari, filtering out all other distractions, from the pungent sweat smell coming off Kankuro to crisp, green scent that clung to Gaara. “No, it wasn’t the right question, but it nearly was. I had to rephrase it. I asked him, _did someone to whom you aren’t allied do this to you?_ And he said yes.”

“That pissant.” Temari’s voice dropped into a growl, and her mouth warped around the imprecation. “I expected mind games, but he’s being real fucking exacting for someone in his position. No wonder you choked him.”

“I choked him before I asked him any questions,” Sakura reminded her, smiling bashfully to cover up how validated she felt. It wasn’t just her; Sasori really _did_ have it coming. “You’re right, though. He really has no business behaving as if he has the upper hand.”  

“I disagree.”

Startled, Sakura shifted to face Gaara, and nearly bashed her knee against his desk.

It was Kankuro who asked, “Whatcha mean, Gaara?”

“Sasori knows that we aren’t yet prepared to kill him.” Gaara spoke to them all, but his eyes were for Sakura. “Just like he knows that he’s too weak to be tortured. He may not have the upper hand, but he’s not entirely powerless, either.”

Even Kankuro had nothing to say to that.

“He’s toying with you, Sakura, and I think you’re already aware of that.” Gaara’s face didn’t soften at all, but he lowered his voice as though to exclude his siblings from what he said next. “You don’t have to speak with him anymore. However, we’ll still need you on hand to heal him, if you don’t mind seeing that part of the mission through.”

An out. Gaara was giving Sakura an out. Like he was invested in Sakura’s mental health. Like he wanted to limit her interactions with the man who’d nearly killed her. Like—

Like she was _weak_.

“No,” Sakura said. Abruptly. _Rudely_. She heard Kankuro hiss.

Gaara just blinked—possibly for the first time in the last ten minutes.

“No, you won’t heal Sasori?” Gaara asked. “Or, no, you won’t give up on the mission in its entirety?”

“I won’t give up, period.” Sakura clenched her hands, then relaxed them, and found that she’d stopped feeling Sasori’s pulse beat against her palm a while ago. “I’m going to fulfill this mission in its entirety and to the best of my abilities.”

“You’re stubborn,” said Gaara. Sakura decided to take that as a compliment.

“Hey, I’m best friends with _Ino_.” Sakura forced a grin, but it wavered under Gaara’s stoicism. “I mean, if I haven’t choked _her_ to death yet, then I'm pretty sure I can handle Sasori.”

Temari nodded like she understood exactly what Sakura was saying, while Kankuro just muttered, “ _Girls_ ,” under his breath.

Gaara stood up. He paced to the window and its sill full of cacti, bending his head over his spiny houseplants like he was looking for something in particular.

Gaara said, “Sakura, come here.”

 _Asking nicely wouldn’t’ve killed you_ , Sakura thought. But Gaara was the Kazekage, she was on his turf, and his order hadn’t been unreasonable. Sakura went.

“Do you like plants?” Gaara asked, still bent over his cacti.

“Plants?” Sakura echoed. “I mean, uh, yes. The Yamanaka are florists, and I’ve been helping out at their flower shop since I was little…”

Gaara hovered his hand over a cactus with white flowers, then a cactus that had no flowers at all, then finally scooped up a cactus crowned with blooming pink. He held it out to Sakura.

“This is a beehive cactus,” he said. “I just watered it, so all you need to do for now is set it on your windowsill. I’ll write down instructions for its care later.”

Sakura stared at the cactus. It was a little bit ugly in the way that all cacti were, but its flowers were very pretty, and she liked the way the rosy pink faded to white around each petal’s base.

“You’re giving this to me?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t. Why else would he be handing it to her? So she could _eat_ it?

…Well, maybe. This was Gaara, and they were in Suna. Best not to discount even the wilder possibilities.

 Gaara’s wide forehead pinched. “Do you not want it?”

Sakura had never received a present from a foreign Kage before, but she knew the etiquette. You didn’t refuse personal gifts from military rulers unless you wanted to trigger an international incident.

“No, um, I. Yes, of course I want it.” Except not really. “Thank you very much, Kazekage-sama.” And although she still wore her sturdy leather gloves, Sakura was careful when she accepted the cactus, holding the clay pot firmly and not allowing her fingers to brush the plant itself.

Why did Gaara want her to have it, anyway? Was he trying to cheer her up or something?

“Cute,” said Kankuro, and Sakura wanted to throw the cactus at his _face_. “We’ll make a lady killer out of you yet, Gaara.”

“Touching,” Temari agreed, and Sakura abruptly decided that she would spare Kankuro in favor of attacking his sister. Then Temari went on, “All this official business is making me hungry. Kankuro. Buy me food.”

“Buy your own food,” Kankuro snapped. “The only person I’m willing to treat is Sakura, ’cause she’s a guest, and even that’s gonna be a onetime thing. You hear that, Sakura? I’m willing to buy you food just this once. Take it or leave it.”

“You’ll treat the _both of us_ , asshole, or I’ll sweep you into next week.” Temari grinned at Sakura and Gaara. “Actually, make that the three of us. You wanna come too, Gaara?”

Grumbling, Kankuro dug out his wallet and started counting bills.

Gaara appeared to hesitate, so Sakura offered him an encouraging smile. He’d done something nice for her when he hadn’t needed to, and while Sakura couldn’t see the appeal in Gaara’s houseplant of choice, they obviously meant something to him.

“Temari’s right,” said Sakura, cradling the cactus close to her chest—but not too close. “You should come with us, Kazekage-sama.”  

Gaara looked Sakura over. Gauging her sincerity?

“All right,” he said.

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

Probably feeling generous on account of the free meal she was about to eat, Temari offered to take everyone’s orders for them.

“Just green tea for me, please, if they have it,” said Sakura.

What Sakura really wanted to do was ask for a bottle of shochu and drink the whole thing by herself, but getting wasted on an extended mission in a foreign village when getting wasted _wasn’t_ a mission parameter (look, Sakura had seen some shit) would probably look bad.

“You can’t keep skipping meals.” Temari lingered by the booth they’d claimed, the better to frown down her nose at Sakura.

“I ate breakfast.” Which was true. She’d stopped at a dango stand on her way to the hospital.

“Matsuri saw her at a dango stand at eight thirty this morning,” said Kankuro, not even bothering to lift his face off his folded arms as he snitched on Sakura.

Sakura kicked at him under the table, but he’d already moved his legs out of the way.

Temari gave Sakura a look that she’d frequently seen on her own mother’s face. The resemblance was as uncanny as it was unnerving.

“I’m getting you the same thing as me,” Temari decided, and stomped off to order at the counter.  

Temari liked sweet chestnuts and—kenchin soup? Even if Sakura couldn’t bring herself to eat, at least just looking at the food Temari’d selected wouldn’t make her queasy.

Kankuro and Temari had squabbled for a while before selecting this restaurant—Gaara hadn’t cared beyond casting a deciding vote to shut them up, and Sakura didn’t know Suna well enough to express a preference. The restaurant was housed in a large brown tent, and it did not serve scorpion meat.

“Temari’s right,” said Gaara, and Sakura snapped out of her contemplation of the tabletop.

“Right about wh—oh.” Sakura sketched her fingers over the table’s buffed surface, noting vaguely that she needed to remove her chipping nail polish and apply a new coat. “Well, you know, stress can affect appetite.”

“And you’re a medic-nin.” Gaara scooted a little farther away from Kankuro, who’d dozed off and begun to snore. “You should know that you need to eat even when your appetite tells you otherwise.”

Sakura tapped the table, trying to exorcise her heating temper with each beat of her fingers. She couldn’t yell at a foreign Kage, but she was damn well tired of getting lectured by someone her own age—

“Gaara fusses when he’s worried.” Temari dropped into the conversation and onto the seat beside Sakura. “Don’t mind him; his heart’s in the right place.”

Worried. Gaara was concerned for Sakura. Maybe he even felt bad about what she had to do.

_He **should** feel bad. He got me into this mess._

“Food should be here in a few minutes,” Temari went on. “Sakura, I ordered kenchin soup for you, and since you wouldn’t choose for yourself, you don’t get to complain.”

Sakura mustered up a smile. “Uh, thanks, Temari-san.”

“Just Temari is fine. You don’t need to use honorifics with me or Kankuro.” When Sakura hesitated, Temari said, a little more tersely, “Well? We’re your friends, aren’t we?”

“Uh, sure.” Temari’s eyes glinted. “I mean, of course! Of course you are.”

“Gaara’s your friend, too.” Temari jerked a thumb at her youngest brother. “But I wouldn’t drop the formalities with him quite yet. It’d look bad if a Konoha-nin called the Kazekage by just his name, you know?”

“Unless you’re Naruto,” Sakura said, mouth twisting wryly.  

Temari snorted and pulled her legs up onto the bench, and Sakura had to scoot out of range before she got inadvertently kicked. Temari caught the motion, though, and ran a critical eye from Sakura’s knees to her face.

“What?” Sakura demanded, feeling itchy.

“Oh, it’s just—well.” Temari flicked her fingers at Sakura, a mirror for how Kankuro moved when he was manipulating his puppets. “It’s your outfit.”

“What about it?” Sakura played with her collar, hissing when her hand bumped a patch of sunburn. Dammit, she’d missed another spot.

Temari snapped her fingers. “ _That_. Don’t get me wrong—those clothes look cute on you, but they’re just not suited for everyday life in the desert. You should try covering up more.”

Kankuro hadn’t changed out of his black clothing, but Gaara and Temari were both dressed in the pale linen robes that Suna-nin preferred to wear when they weren’t on missions. Sakura eyed Temari’s baggy outfit, and then glanced down at her own formfitting shorts.

“I’ll just heal myself whenever I get sunburnt,” Sakura decided.

Temari pursed her lips. “And waste valuable chakra on preventable injuries?”

Temari had her there. “I’ll think about it,” said Sakura, already knowing that she’d give in.

“You can borrow something of mine for now,” said Temari. “We’ll take Sakura shopping tomorrow, won’t we, Kankuro? Kankuro! Wake the hell up!” And Temari dropped her legs off the bench, the better to kick her brother.

Kankuro snorted awake, flailing. “ _Fuck_ , Temari! Lay off—”

Sakura clapped both hands over her mouth, caging her giggles. She looked at Gaara across the table, wanting to share her amusement but not really expecting anything.

Gaara’s mouth was set in its usual grim, steady line, but his eyes—his eyes were bright and amused, and just looking at him made Sakura want to—

Sakura dropped her hands from her mouth, let her head sag on her neck, and laughed harder.

And, would you look at that. Her appetite was back, too.

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

She felt him before she saw him.

Sakura wasn’t a sensor type, but his chakra signature smothered everything it touched even without the biju to contribute to it. But maybe she’d imagined it; maybe that _other_ cloud of chakra was messing her up. Maybe—

Nope.

Gaara saved Sakura the trouble of an awkward approach by pushing off the wall and coming to her. He was wearing the same robe from earlier that evening, and it was identical to the one Temari had lent Sakura before saying goodnight.

Sakura tried on a smile, but it pinched her mouth. Gaara didn’t smile back, scrubbed totally clean of the amusement he’d shared with her over dinner.

(Now, Gaara laughing with her: that right there was probably a mirage.)

“How’d you know?” Sakura asked once Gaara’s silent staring had reached a peak level of uncomfortable.  

“I didn’t,” said Gaara. “Temari’s on night watch, and she saw you leave the house.”

“But I snuck out a window,” Sakura snapped, then wondered if she should’ve copped to that. Oh, well. Not like it made any difference.

“Yes, I know,” said Gaara. “Next time, pick a different window.”

Yeah, he had a point. Sneaking out of her own window was just asking to get caught.

And maybe part of her had _wanted_ to get caught. Maybe, in spite of her resolve, she still wasn’t ready to face Sasori without a friend by her side.

“You’re not going to ask me what I’m doing here?” Sakura pinned her sleeves' cuffs between her palms and her fingers, crumpling the linen just for something to feel.

“I can guess,” said Gaara. Well, obviously. It’d been a stupid question, anyway.  

“Are you going to make me leave?” Sakura asked.

Unexpectedly, Gaara shook his head. “If you feel that you need to speak with him, then I won’t stop you.” Sakura perked up—and then slumped when Gaara added, “But I’m not leaving, either.”

“Kazekage-sama,” she tried, “you’re a busy man, and you need to rest—”

“I still sleep poorly, anyway,” said Gaara, and something in his tone told her not to ask for details. “I’m going in there with you.”

Sakura flushed with frustrated rebellion. Didn’t Gaara understand that she needed to do this? She didn’t _want_ to do this, that was true, but she _needed_ to. She had to make him understand.

At a loss, Sakura reached out—and clasped one of Gaara’s hands between both of hers.  

Gaara’s eyes widened, and the thick black strokes that framed them only exaggerated his expression. His hand was dry and warm—just a hand, same as any other she’d held—and Sakura was screaming internally because you didn’t just _grab_ the Kazekage, and you certainly didn’t just grab _Gaara_.

But she couldn’t back down. If she snatched her hands away as though burned, like she wanted to, Gaara would think she was weak.

So, gently—very, _very_ gently—Sakura squeezed Gaara’s hand.

“Please,” Sakura whispered, imagining that her stare was a drill and aiming it straight between Gaara’s eyes. “Please, let me go in there by myself. You can stay out here if you want,” he could do anything he wanted because this was _his_ village, “but you have to let me speak with him alone. I _need_ to, Gaara-sama.”

Gaara’s lips parted. Quickly, like firming the point at which they touched could sway him, Sakura shifted her hands and tangled their fingers.

Gaara’s fingers twitched.

“All right,” he said.

And because she really hadn’t expected him to capitulate, Sakura parroted him like an idiot. “ _All right_?”

“That’s what I said.” Warily, Gaara dropped his eyes to their entwined hands, probably wondering what else she’d do if he didn’t agree to her demands. “If this is what you think you need to do…then do it.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” said Sakura, voice strangled, and gave Gaara’s hand another soft squeeze. Gaara’s eyes bugged a little again, and although part of Sakura wanted to keep touching his hand just to see what would happen, she decided that he was probably uncomfortable—not as uncomfortable as _she_ was, surely—and let him go. “Really. Thank you for trusting me to do this.”

“I don’t know if you should be thanking me,” Gaara said, dubious.  

“Probably not,” said Sakura.

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

Sasori was already sitting up when Sakura walked into his cell. Someone had returned his IV to its upright position and untangled the line that fed into his arm.

“Do you ever sleep?” Sakura asked, heaving the door shut behind her. She contemplated the chair, then decided to remain standing for now.

“I am…unused to the necessity. It’s been twenty years, you understand.” Sasori let a beat pass before saying, “You’re back sooner than I’d expected.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting,” said Sakura.

“What a polite young lady you are,” Sasori drawled, then indicated the chair with one clubbed hand. “Won’t you sit?”

“I think better when I’m standing up.”

“No,” said Sasori, contemplative. “No, I don’t think you do. You think best in battle, don’t you? When you can’t afford to stand still. Or am I wrong?”

Sakura fought not to reach for her old wound. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know that you’ve apparently gone native.” Sasori flicked a disdainful eye over Sakura’s plain Suna robes. “I know that your talents outstrip those of your peers, and that you’re prone to inexplicably prioritizing the safety of strangers above that of your own. What I don’t know…is your surname.”

Sakura clenched her jaw so it wouldn’t drop. She felt like she’d been doing that a lot lately.

“What?”

“We don’t have surnames in Suna, you see, or clans. But you’re a Leaf, are you not?” Sasori’s stare was worse than Gaara’s. Intellectually, Sakura knew that Sasori couldn’t possibly have X-ray eyes, but all the same, she wanted to cross her arms in front of her—better yet, leave the room entirely. “I won’t waste your time or mine. You’re here to interrogate me—in illusory privacy this time; congratulations on your shallow victory—but you already know that I won’t cooperate unless you offer me something in return. So. What is your surname?”

Her _surname_.

Sakura eyed Sasori’s IV, wondering what kind of drugs the Suna medics were feeding him.

“I never caught it,” Sasori added, and Sakura knew that he’d be drumming his fingers if he could. “And, as you know, I died before I could look you up in a bingo book.”

Sakura was going to tell him; really, she was. He knew her given name, her face, her village of origin, her fighting style. Her last name wouldn’t give him any leverage that he didn’t have already.  

Still. She made a show of thinking about it—crossing her arms, tilting her head from one side to the other, contemplating the ceiling—and was satisfied to see Sasori’s mouth tighten.  

He could hold his cooperation over her head, but she could hold wasted time over _his_.

“Haruno,” she finally said. “I’m Haruno Sakura.”

“Haruno.” Sasori appeared to turn it over on his tongue. “Haruno Sakura. _Cherry blossoms in a spring field_ , is it? How trite.”

Sakura’s hands clenched inside her baggy sleeves. “Sorry it’s not to your taste.”

“Well.” Sasori’s eyes traced the outline of Sakura’s hair, and she fought not to push it behind her ears, to cover it up somehow. “I can’t say that it doesn’t suit you. You _are_ tragically short lived, aren’t you?”

“Tragically short tempered, too, or are you in need of a reminder?” Sakura kicked the chair back and dropped down into it. She didn’t want to be close to Sasori, but she wanted to observe his physical cues from as small a distance as possible. “I answered your question. I hate to compare myself to you—no, really, I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth and everything—but I don’t like wasting time, either. Why were you willing to exchange your cooperation for my presence? And I want a real answer this time, not some flippant—what the hell are you looking at?”

Because Sasori certainly wasn’t looking at her. No, he’d fixed his eyes on the doorway, or something near the doorway. Sakura didn’t let herself follow Sasori’s line of sight. He was cuffed and injured, but a kunoichi worth her salt never turned her back on an enemy, injured or otherwise.  

“You went to the trouble of coming to see me on your own,” said Sasori, “and yet you couldn’t shake your babysitters, now, could you?”

Sakura didn’t turn her head, but she moved her eyes as far to the right as they would go. She saw sand particles drifting through the air, the curved edge of a floating sphere.

“Kazekage- _sama_.” Sakura raised her voice, although it wasn’t really necessary. Gaara’s ears were sharp. “I thought you’d agreed—quite graciously, may I add—to giving me at least the illusion of privacy?”

Gaara didn’t answer, but his Third Eye seemed to radiate something like shame. Or maybe that was just what Sakura wanted him to feel.

Well. He’d kept his word about not following her in here, hadn’t he? _Damn loopholes_.

At any rate, Gaara did not dissipate his handy floating eyeball, and Sakura knew it was a lost cause.

“Your village must value you very much,” said Sasori, “if the Kazekage himself feels compelled to see to your welfare.”

“You wouldn’t know, but looking after each other is what friends do.” Sakura shot the Eye a quick glare, and curled her tongue so she wouldn’t stick it out. “ _Even if they have to violate personal boundaries to do it_.”

“Friends?” Sasori no longer carried poisoned blades around in his body, but he certainly had a particular talent for injecting venom into every word he spoke. “Don’t be an idiot. One does not befriend a Kage, let alone a jinchuriki, current or former.”

“You don’t get to talk about my friends,” Sakura growled—only to clamp her mouth shut and sit back in her seat.

She shuffled through what she remembered about their battle (everything, all of it), and thought of the—for lack of a better word— _befuddlement_ Sasori had expressed when Sakura protected Chiyo at the expense of her own safety.

“Is that why you wanted to see me again? Because I _confuse_ you?” Sakura stared Sasori in his new, flexible, human face. “Do you want to compare _life philosophies_?”

“I’m not _confused_ ,” Sasori snapped, sounding like a defensive child. Maybe transferring his consciousness into an eternally young body had arrested his development. “You make no sense, and I’d like to analyze just what it is that’s wrong with you.”

Sakura smiled nastily. “So, _confused_.”

Sasori looked down his nose at her—or as best he could, seeing how he was chained to a cot. “I have very vivid memories of your medical prowess. Perhaps I wanted one of the best to bring me back from what your _friends_ have done to me.”

Sakura glanced at Sasori’s hands.

“How long have you been back?” she asked, still studying Sasori’s hands.

“Eight months,” said Sasori.

Startled—he hadn’t even tried to drag it out—Sakura looked away from his hands and into his face. He projected boredom.

“And how long,” said Sakura, “have you been in Wind Country?”

“Including the time I’ve spent in Suna’s custody?” Sakura nodded. “Three months and twelve days. I can give you the hours and minutes as well, if you’d like.”

“No, thanks.” Sakura curled her fingers, feeling the buzz of her chakra scalpel’s handle.

Sasori’s eyes actually widened, but he wrangled his expression. “And what,” he started to say, “do you intend to do with—”

Sakura braced her knee on the cot, grabbed Sasori by the elbow, wrestled his arm into her lap, and sliced his cast open with one decisive stroke.

“—that,” Sasori finished, sounding more irritated than anything else.

With far more care than he deserved, Sakura felt up and down his hand, and then touched each of his fingers in turn. Hands steady but innards shaky, Sakura reached for Sasori’s other arm, and he didn’t resist as she opened and discarded that cast, too.

“Your hands…” Sakura glared into Sasori’s face from far too narrow a distance. “The healing process is way too far along.”

“You forget,” said Sasori, unmoved, “that my grandmother was as skilled a medic as she was a toxicologist.”

He’d been funneling healing chakra into his hands, bit by bit, careful of his taxed reserves and exhausted body. But he’d done it. His hands were nearly completely healed.

"I didn't forget." Sakura dissolved her scalpel and gripped Sasori's hands like holding onto him could stop him from forming chakra strings. "That's why I checked."

“Clever girl,” said Sasori.

He looked—

No. No, she didn’t know what that was, and she wouldn’t study it, either.

Something tickled Sakura’s knee, and she jerked, looking down and expecting to see chakra strings after all, but no.

It was sand. Sand, spilling under the crack in the door and through the narrow window, climbing the legs of Sasori’s cot and coiling slowly up his arms, stopping when it reached his hands because they were still locked with Sakura’s.

“Gaara-sama,” Sakura whispered.

The sand churned. Sakura looked at Gaara’s Third Eye.

Again, she said, “Gaara-sama.”

The eye stared back, and without a face to frame it, she had no clue as to what Gaara was feeling.

But she knew what he was thinking.

“I’d let go now, if I were you,” said Sasori, entirely dispassionate. “The Kazekage won’t allow me free use of my hands.”

This was Sasori. This was _Sasori_. Sakura hated him so much it made her want to spit, but she was also a medic, and she couldn’t just—she couldn’t just let Gaara—

Sakura inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. She stood up.

She let go of Sasori’s hands.

The sand raced down Sasori’s arms, wrapped grainy fists around his hands, and contracted.

Sasori didn’t scream. He went pale as chalk and broke out into an awful sweat, but he didn’t even gasp.

His silence was worse, somehow, than the meaty crunch of breaking bone.

Gaara’s Third Eye dissolved. The door swung open.

Sakura’s hands shook. She was a medic and her steady surgeon’s hands kept her patients alive, but she was _shaking_.

She said to Gaara, “I need to administer first aid.”

“I’ve already sent for a medic,” said Gaara, and something about his unwavering voice steadied her hands, even though he’d been the one to trigger her shakes. “We’re leaving.”

Sakura didn’t remember crossing the threshold into the hallway, but Gaara was shutting the door behind them, so she must’ve walked out under her own power. At some point. Somehow.

Sakura’s breath hitched. Hitched again.

She needed to get out of here. She needed fresh air. She needed to see the sky. She needed—

“I’m going to the greenhouse,” she said. She couldn’t choke out anything else. Just that.

Gaara nodded and led the way to the stairs. “I’ll come with you,” he said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaara and Sakura stay up past their bedtime, Kankuro ships it, and Sasori's grace period runs out.

Those looking for relief from the heat wouldn’t find it in Suna’s greenhouse; it was almost unbearably warm in here. But it was also humid and lush—like Konoha—and just about anything was preferable to the dry desert air that sucked the moisture right out of your mouth.

Sakura began to calm down by degrees the second she stepped inside, for a given value of _calm_. She stopped shaking, at least.  

“No part of this greenhouse is barred to you,” Gaara told her. “You can pick whatever you’d like.” Then, perhaps remembering that Suna’s stock of herbs were precious and finite, he clarified, “In moderation.”

He didn’t need to tell her twice. Sakura had already spotted the valerian plant’s pink and white flowers, and she made a beeline for them now.

Sakura wasn’t interested in the valerian’s sweet-smelling flowers, though. She rolled up the billowing sleeves of her borrowed robe, crouched in front of the neatly labeled plant bed, and got to digging.

She’d nearly uprooted the thing when she felt the hem of Gaara’s robe brush her stooped back, and she stilled without meaning to. The greenhouse was so quiet at this time of night that her ears rang just to fill the silence, but somehow, she could hear Sasori’s bones crunch as if they were still breaking right now, right here.

 _It’s just Gaara._ With effort, Sakura resumed her dig through the dark soil that Suna had imported from richer pastures. _It’s just Gaara. He’s your friend. He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt anyone unless he has to—_

“What do you want the valerian for?” Gaara asked.  

Yes, Gaara was reformed. Yes, he was a fundamentally good person, one of the best Sakura knew. But apparently, he still had to work on _not_ looming like a creep.

“Valerian root has sedative effects.” Sakura unearthed the root in question and dropped it into the woven basket she’d picked up from the stack by the door. Rising smoothly to her feet, she resumed her hunt down the greenhouse’s aisles.

Gaara followed her. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“A little bit since I got here,” Sakura admitted, scanning the rows of plants. “But it’s not a preexisting condition, and I’m sure I’ll be fine once—things’ve been cleared up.” Sakura spotted a vivid purple disc with a distinctive corona, checked the label, and crouched to collect the passionflower’s leaves.

“Passionflower leaf is an ingredient in some sedative teas,” said Gaara, and Sakura didn’t need to see his face to know that he was on to her.

“You’re a knowledgeable horticulturist, Kazekage-sama.” Sakura decided that she’d limit herself to two base ingredients for now and come back for more if these didn’t work. She rose, intending to lay out her findings on the greenhouse’s workbench, but Gaara—every scrawny inch of him—blocked the way.

“I’ve tried more herbal remedies than even you can imagine, Sakura.” Gaara blinked slowly, as though to draw attention to the dark circles pressed deep into the thin skin that framed his eyes. “Those that worked succeeded only in that they compromised my motor skills and made me slightly drowsy.”

“Well.” Sakura shifted the basket’s weight and took a large step around Gaara. “None of those herbal remedies were mixed by _me_.”

And leaving that declaration to hang in the air, Sakura took a seat at the workbench, dumped out the valerian root and passionflower leaves, and dug through her robe’s pockets for paper and pencil.

Sakura was halfway through a list of ingredients that could potentially complement the valerian root—making note of each one’s side effects, if applicable—before she noticed that Gaara had taken a seat across from her and was writing something down as well.

Gaara must’ve felt Sakura’s considering stare, because he stopped writing and stared right back. Sakura wanted to look away—she hadn’t meant it lightly when she’d thought that Gaara’s eyes would always be unnerving—but she couldn’t.

What Gaara had done to Sasori had been necessary. Sakura’d been sitting right next to Sasori, unaware, and he could’ve—his hands were almost well, and he could have—

Without breaking eye contact, Gaara folded his piece of paper before thrusting it at Sakura, and she reared back so suddenly that she nearly fell off her stool. She grabbed a corner of the workbench, swearing under her breath.

“Instructions for the care and keeping of your beehive cactus,” said Gaara, unruffled.

 _Beehive cactus_? What—oh. Sakura’d all but forgotten about the cactus as soon as she’d dropped it off in her room on her way to dinner. Exquisitely conscious of how Gaara’s eyes had bulged when she’d grabbed his hand earlier, Sakura was careful not to let their fingers brush when she accepted the instructions.

“Ah—thank you, Gaara-sama.” Sakura held the folded paper in the cup of her hand, absently rubbing her thumb over its waxy surface. “You’ve been very kind to me.”

“You’re the kind one.” Sakura wished that Gaara still had a list of instructions with which to distract himself, because now his attention was all for Sakura, and it was—not unnerving, exactly, but it wasn’t comfortable, either. “You treat me the same as everyone else. Like a normal person. Like I never tried to kill you.”

Sakura’s heart squeezed. Yes, Gaara had tried to kill her, blind with bloodlust and drunk on his demon’s chakra. And earlier tonight, he’d broken Sasori’s hands with all the composure he hadn’t shown when he’d pinned Sakura to a tree.

Well, Sakura _assumed_ he’d been composed. She hadn’t seen his face, had she?

Necessary. He’d done what was necessary.

“That was years ago.” Sakura wondered what kind of person she was, that she could brush off that the friend who sat across from her had once wanted to squeeze her until she popped. “And I’ve already forgiven you, Gaara-sama, so you should put it out of your mind, too.” She focused on the set of instructions Gaara had given her, folding it into another quarter and putting special effort into making a perfect crease.

“Besides,” she said after a pause that Gaara didn’t seem inclined to fill. “Besides, um, Sasuke-kun tried to kill me too, once—although, to be fair, I tried to kill him first. Not that I’m making any excuses for him, or for you.” Shit. She was probably just making it worse, but she kept on babbling. “Naruto almost killed me on accident once, but that was Kuruma-sama. And, uh,” she was getting desperate, “we weren’t trying to kill each other, exactly, and you probably weren’t paying us any attention, but maybe you saw how Ino and I went after each other during the second round of the Chunin Exams—”

“I didn’t know.”  

Sakura dropped the instructions, then scrambled to scoop the paper up and carefully store it in her pocket.  

“Huh?” she said brilliantly.

“I didn’t know that you’d tried to kill Sasuke.” Gaara rested his forearms on the workbench, like he was settling into a lengthy conversation.

Oh, hell. Why hadn’t she just gone to bed?

Sakura toyed with the valerian’s long, stringy roots. Took a breath.

“I was going to do it for Naruto.” Sakura wove her fingers through roots that could heal while thinking of the poison she’d mixed, the poison into which she’d dipped that kunai. “Not just for Naruto—for everyone who’d be hurt if Sasuke-kun wasn’t stopped. Sasuke-kun—he had no reason to distrust me. I mean, I was so devoted to him that I’d begged him to take me with him the first time he left Konoha. Why should he doubt my sincerity when I asked to join him again?”

“Because you’re clever.” Sakura flushed at the frank assessment of her intelligence. “And because you’re dangerous. Sasuke was your teammate, Sakura. He would’ve known you and your mind better than most.”

Sakura didn’t like thinking about—about before. She especially didn’t like to think about it now that she and her team had healed the rift in their friendship, now that Sasuke wrote to her as often as he could with muted affection in every inked character.

But she said, “It’d been years since we were together as teammates, though. He didn’t know me anymore.”

“You were the Fifth’s disciple and an enemy soldier,” said Gaara. “It would’ve been stupid of Sasuke not to keep tabs on your progress and your abilities.”

Sakura imagined how Sasuke would’ve reacted to being called _stupid_ , even hypothetically. Her lips twitched.

 “You don’t hold back,” she said, “do you, Gaara-sama?”

“No.” And then, as though to illustrate just how little he cared for social norms, Gaara went on, “Trying to kill the person you love most for a greater good—do you think your love grew weaker in the attempt, or stronger?”

 _There he goes again_ , Sakura thought. She dusted bits of plant and flecks of soil off her fingers, delaying her answer until the silence curdled and grew awkward.

“All I know,” she finally said, “is that pointing that kunai at Sasuke-kun felt like turning it on myself.” Speaking so frankly of love with someone who wasn’t her best friend made Sakura flush pinker than her hair, but she forced herself to continue. “And I know…I know that I love him now more than ever.”

“Do you think he loves you?” Gaara asked, devastatingly straight faced.

Sakura dropped her face into her hands. “Ah, geez, Gaara-sama!”

“Have I made you uncomfortable?” Gaara’s clothes rustled as he shifted, and he sounded a bit more stilted when he said, “Sorry.”

“No—no, it’s okay.” Sakura squeezed her cheeks like she could squeeze the hot color out of her face, and peeked at Gaara through her fingers. He wasn’t quite looking at her, and that gave her the courage to say, “I don’t know for sure if what Sasuke-kun feels for me is a romantic, but…”

Sakura brushed her fingertips over her forehead. She smiled.

“But he definitely loves me. I’m sure of that.”

“I see,” Gaara said after a pause in which Sakura dropped her hands and returned to her list of potential ingredients. “I’ve learned that love and friendship are more than what a person can do for you or what you can do for them. Sometimes friendship’s about being happy for the other person even when their happiness has nothing to do with you. So, I’m…happy for you, Sakura.”

How was this kind, hesitant man the same man who’d spoken frankly of wanting to kill Sasori? How was he the same person who’d struggled clumsily out of the muck of his homicidal impulses?  

Well. People were complicated, shinobi especially. Sakura was very aware of her own dichotomy: she could snap a grown man in half as easily as she could save his life.

“Thank you, Gaara-sama.” The smile Sakura’d worn when she’d thought of Sasuke lingered and grew into something else, something just for Gaara. But wariness stiffened her muscles as soon as they’d relaxed, and she pressed the tip of her pencil too hard against the paper. “Um—I apologize. I’ve been calling you by your name instead of your title, so—”

“It’s fine,” said Gaara. “Like I said: we’re friends.”

Oh. All right, then.

“I’m glad you think so,” said Sakura. She crossed out a bit of writing and wrote a new suggestion under the struck name. Yes, that would work—

“I consider you a friend,” said Gaara, “but I wasn’t aware that you reciprocated the sentiment until you said so to Sasori.”

Sakura fumbled her pencil, nearly dropping it. “Well, uh, I don’t have Naruto’s charisma—or whatever it is about him that makes him such a people-magnet—but I’m always happy to have another friend.”

Now, should she try to the passionflower first, or the valerian? Valerian could have some adverse withdrawal symptoms, especially in men—

“Sakura.”

“Yes, Gaara-sama?” Okay, so she’d try the passionflower first. She’d try the valerian second, or even third—Gaara said she could pick whatever she’d like, so she should look for chamomile next—

“You don’t have to go back to Sasori.”

 _Now_ she dropped the pencil. It bounced off the workbench and rolled across the floor. Sakura did not retrieve it.

“Excuse me?” It was all she could manage.  

Gaara frowned—but not at her, Sakura realized. At himself? At Sasori?

“I never thought that you’d be _happy_ to see him again, but I hadn’t—” Gaara flexed his hands, and Sakura flinched instinctively. Gaara caught the flinch—of course he did—and flattened his hands on the workbench like a peace offering. “I hadn’t realized he’d traumatized you this badly. I’m—sorry for forcing him on you.”

Sakura licked her lips. She scratched her nails against the workbench, thinking she should probably retrieve that pencil before someone walked in and impaled their foot on it.

“You didn’t force him on me,” said Sakura. “I agreed to speak with him, and I wasn’t coerced—”

“Weren’t you?” Gaara said, something like a challenge in the question, and he used those eyes of his to their full effect, pinning Sakura to her seat with a look. “We— _I_ made it quite clear that getting Sasori to cooperate with us was a matter of national security. Of course you felt pressured.”  

“I _said_ ,” Sakura raised her voice, “that you aren’t forcing me to do anyth—”

Gaara touched the back of her hand. His fingertips glanced off her knuckles, and then he withdrew so quickly that Sakura didn’t have time to feel the touch.

Sakura snapped her mouth shut.  

“Sakura,” he said. “Listen to me. Don’t go back to Sasori. I shouldn’t’ve subjected you to him in the first place. This was…a mistake.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes like that could hold the frustrated tears at bay.

 _Crybaby_ , she thought. _You’re still a **goddamn** crybaby._

“I have to,” she said, and ground her knuckles against her thigh when she heard her voice waver.

“You don’t,” said Gaara, quiet, like that was the closest he could get to gentle.

 _Should’ve gone back to goddamn bed_.

Sakura propped her elbow on the bench and dropped her forehead into her cupped palm. She inhaled, and if it sounded like she was swallowing tears, well, Gaara was nice enough to pretend not to notice.

“Have you been giving him chakra suppressants?” Sakura’s voice sounded only a little nasal, at least.

“No,” said Gaara. “His chakra reserves are too low to risk it. Why?”

Sakura scraped her hand down her face. She sat up straight and met Gaara’s eyes.

“I’m going to heal him,” she said, and rushed to continue when Gaara frowned and opened his mouth. “ _I’m going to heal him_ , Gaara-sama. His hands—everything. I’m going to make him good as new because I’m Senju Tsunade’s disciple and I damn well _can_ , and then you’re going to put chakra suppressants in his IV so he can’t attack anyone, and you’ll hand him over to your Interrogation Unit once I’ve given him a clean bill of health. If that’s okay with you,” she amended. “Er, Kazekage-sama.”

Gaara crossed his arms, tapping his right thumb against his left bicep.

He said, “Healing him means getting close to him. Even if you don’t acknowledge him beyond what it takes to heal him, he’ll still be able to talk to you. He can still bait you. He _will_ bait you.”

“Not if I gag him first,” Sakura muttered.

“It won’t be a onetime thing, either,” said Gaara, ignoring her. “For every instance in which we break his body if not his mind, you’ll be expected to heal him, or at least supervise our medics whenever _they_ heal him.”  

“And the obvious solution to _that_ ,” said Sakura, crossing her arms as well, “is to torture the relevant information out of him as quickly as possible. The less you need to torture him, the less time I’ll spend in his exalted presence.”

Gaara tapped his bicep harder. Sakura lifted her chin. He could do this all night, probably, but so could she.

He sighed.

“Very well,” he said.

“ _Thank_ you, Gaara-sama.” Sakura bobbed into an abbreviated bow, and as she did, she glanced at her list of herbal remedies, at the columns of neat calligraphy that listed slightly to one side as her hand had tired.  

She still needed to write that letter home—

Sakura’s eyes widened. She straightened up.

The fewer times Suna had to torture Sasori, the better. Each recovery session would have to be longer than the last as the repeated torture wore on Sasori, which meant more time wasted. But if they could somehow limit the physical aspect of the torture—

Sakura bent over to scoop up the wayward pencil, and then dug for a fresh sheet of paper.

“With your permission, Kazekage-sama, I have a suggestion, and a request.”

 “A suggestion, and a request,” Gaara echoed, leaning forward to read the greeting that Sakura’d printed at the top of the otherwise blank sheet of paper. “I assume that they both relate to the letter you’re writing.”

Sakura grinned at him.

“Got it in one.”

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

It was Sakura’s third full day in Suna, and Kankuro and Temari had taken her shopping for desert-appropriate daywear as promised. Once Sakura’d gotten fitted for new robes, Temari’d offered to taker her on a tour through Suna’s limited selection of sweetshops.

Unfortunately, Sakura’s sweet tooth couldn’t compete with the exhaustion she’d racked up over a sleepless night. 

Sakura muffled a jaw-cracking yawn behind her hand, and Kankuro said, “You know, every time you yawn, a piece of your soul leaves your body.”

Without looking away from the sweetshop’s lit-up display case, Temari said, “That’s _sighing_ , you idiot.”

“Whatever.” Kankuro eyed Sakura, who wasn’t so much leaning _over_ the sweetshop’s display case as she was leaning _on_ it for support. “You’ve been dead on your feet since we picked you up from the hospital, Sakura. What gives?”

“Um.” Sakura blinked hard, hoping it would dispel her grogginess. It did not. “Sorry. Busy morning. Lots of patients in the emergency room.” Which was true.

Temari waved for the confectioner’s attention, although she needn’t have bothered. The sweetshop’s proprietor had perked up the minute she’d spotted the Kazekage’s siblings lingering by her shop’s window. Temari pointed at the plate of mochi locked up in the display case and held up three fingers before sliding Kankuro a knife-sharp grin.

“Gaara kept her up late last night,” Temari drawled.

 _That_ woke Sakura up. “It wasn’t like that and you know it!” she blurted, but not before Kankuro’s jaw unhinged.

The confectioner was concentrating on packing up the mochi like her life depended on putting a perfect crease in the wax wrapping paper, but her ears were redder than a sunset. Great. Fantastic. Not a week in Suna, and the seed for a wild rumor about her relationship with the Kazekage had already been planted.

_Thanks, Temari._

“Temari’s just messing with you,” Sakura said in a carrying voice, as much for Kankuro’s benefit as the confectioner’s. “I couldn’t sleep, and since he was up anyway, Gaara-sama—er, Kazekage-sama kept me company while I picked herbs in the greenhouse. _That’s it_.”

Blissfully unconcerned by the chaos she’d seeded, Temari asked the confectioner—who’d only gone redder in the wake of Sakura’s hasty explanation—to add six anko dumplings to her order.

Kankuro, who’d gone mute and blank-eyed as one of his puppets, rallied himself enough to say, with no small token of suspicion, “ _Picking herbs_ isn’t a euphemism, is it?”

“For god’s sake,” Sakura hissed, “ _no_.”

Sakura’s fingers were clenched so tight that the blood had stopped circulating through them, and she loosened her fists, shaking out pins and needles. Kankuro eyed her hands and took a giant step back.

Probably for the best. He _was_  a convenient target. 

“She’s not lying.” Temari dumped her boxes of sweets into Kankuro’s arms, and he scrambled not to drop them. “I saw Sakura sneaking out last night to—” The confectioner had gone into the shop’s backroom, but Temari lowered her voice anyway. “—to _you know where_ , and Gaara went after her.” Temari looked at Sakura in a way that made her flush. “I didn’t expect them to spend the whole night together, though.”

“It wasn’t the _whole night_.” Sakura’s hands had stopped tingling, but now they itched to strike something. If only Sasori were in the vicinity. “I didn’t leave my room until after eleven, and Gaara-sama and I were only together until three, and that’s because we were going over a change in—” Sakura sealed her lips shut.

Kankuro and Temari exchanged a look, one that was heavy with wordless communication. Silently, Temari led the way out of the sweetshop and onto a mostly deserted street that was home to an unoccupied bench.

“Change in what?” Temari asked once they were all settled. “A change in the plan?”

 _At least they’ve stopped teasing me about their brother_ , Sakura thought. The reprieve was almost worth shifting focus to Sakura’s least favorite subject: Sasori.

“I made a suggestion to Gaara-sama last night, and he’s agreed to run it by his Council.” Sakura thought of the letter she’d composed, locked in a drawer in her room and waiting for Gaara’s go-ahead. “He thinks they’ll approve it, but he told me not to tell you guys yet—so keep your mouths _shut_ , okay?” Kankuro and Temari both nodded, rapt, and Sakura knew that Gaara would know she’d told them before the day was out.

Sakura’d committed herself to letting Kankuro and Temari in on the change in plan, but she didn’t want to say the rest out loud; the street was empty and their voices were low, but this was a shinobi village, and even empty streets had ears.

Sakura turned on the bench to more fully face Temari, shifting her thigh so it blocked the view of her hands from potential passersby. She waited for Kankuro to look over Temari’s shoulder before forming a series of hand signals close to her stomach.

Kankuro blinked, then snorted. “Yeah, no way. The Council’ll throw a fit. Except for Baki, maybe, but he’s just one person.”

“The Interrogation Unit’ll be pissed,” said Temari, but she didn’t look as skeptical as Kankuro. “And Kankuro’s right; a quarter of the Council resisted Gaara’s decision to involve you in this, and you’re probably the Konoha-nin they hate the least.” And Sakura knew that the Suna Council didn’t like her for who she was as a person; their tolerance of her could only be attributed to the time she’d saved Kankuro’s life and kept Chiyo breathing long enough to deliver her and her sacrificial jutsu to Gaara. “They’ll resist bring in another Leaf, let alone two.”

“Right now, I’m not interested in what the Council thinks.” Sakura eased her leg down and linked her hands in her lap. “What do _you two_ think?”

Maybe she’d flattered them by prioritizing their opinions; whatever the reason, both Kankuro and Temari appeared to take Sakura’s question seriously.

Kankuro was the first to settle on a stance, saying, “We’ve already got one Leaf in it up to her eyeballs; what’s two more?” He jerked his chin at Sakura. “And I guess we owe you. We _did_ spring our very special guest on you without a real warning.”   

“Trust me,” said Sakura, “as far as making _that_ up to me goes, you’ll have to do a lot more than just trusting my judgment this once.”

Kankuro probably meant for his answering smile to look mean, but it came out pained.

“Simmer down, you two.” Temari nudged Kankuro gently in the ribs before meeting Sakura’s eyes. “You want to know what I think? I think the more people you involve in this, the messier it gets.” Sakura’s shoulders slumped, but Temari wasn’t finished. “That being said, if you think involving those two’ll lend us some expediency, then I’m all for it.”

Sakura knew she was probably a little delirious from exhaustion, but that didn’t stop her from flinging her arms around Temari. She couldn’t properly hug both siblings at once, though, not with the way they were all sitting, so she settled for clutching Kankuro’s sleeves.

“Thanks, guys.” It came out kind of muffled, since Sakura’s nose and mouth were jammed against the side of Temari’s head.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Kankuro grunted, jostled, and Sakura heard more than saw the packaged sweets cascade out of his lap and onto the sidewalk.

“Shit!” Temari snapped, right in Sakura’s ear. “Kankuro, if you ruined those sweets, you’re paying for the new ones!”

“Don’t blame me! Sakura’s the one who grabbed us!”

“I’ll pay for them.” Sakura unwound her arms and knelt to help Kankuro pick up the sweets. “And thanks again, you two. I mean it.”

Temari just turned up her nose at Sakura, but Kankuro fixed her with a considering look over the boxes of sweets.

“If you and Gaara have a baby,” he said, “and I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, but if you two have a kid, you’ve gotta name it after me. Deal?”

“Dammit, Kankuro!” Sakura snatched the box of mochi out of Kankuro’s hands and walloped him over the head with it. “Stop being such a shit!”

Temari shouted wordlessly and clawed her fingers, looking wildly from Kankuro and Sakura like she couldn’t decide which of them to hit first.  

“Dammit,” she snarled. “Now they’re _definitely_ ruined!"

**...**

**砂隠れの里**

**...**

They’d moved Sasori to a different chamber. Bigger, with scuff marks on the stone floor like someone’d pushed a desk out of here to make more room. It was on the ground floor, too, and had a bricked-up window. It’d probably functioned as an office at some point.

“So you have more room to work,” said Gaara, who’d come with her. 

That’s what he said, but Sakura counted the guards posted at each corner of this new room and thought, _So they can fit more guards in one place. So the Suna elite can jump in to neutralize Sasori without having to worry about getting past a door first._

He could’ve healed himself. The three times she’d gone to see him, his hands had almost been well enough to choke her, or to wrap her up in his chakra strings. And now she was going to sit at his side and fix him up. _Voluntarily_.

Gaara touched her shoulder. Sakura blinked her gritty eyes—how long had she gone without blinking since walking in here?—and looked at Gaara.

“You can do this,” he said.

Not _Can you do this?_ Not a question. For all that Gaara had doubted Sakura’s proposal, he had faith in her.

Sakura nodded at him. Yes. Yes, she could do this.

Sasori’s ankles were cuffed to a bench that’d been placed in the exact center of the room. IV equipment stood to one side of the bench, but the IV’s line hadn’t been fed into Sasori’s arm yet. Sakura knew why: the IV was stocked with chakra suppressants, and they couldn’t give those to Sasori until after Sakura’d healed him, lest they inadvertently kill Sasori or interfered with Sakura’s own chakra.

Sakura straddled the low stool that faced Sasori’s bench. This close, she could smell him, and he smelled the same as all the other Suna-nin: like dust and sweat. He smelled human.

For once, Sasori wasn’t boring holes in Sakura’s skull. No, his eyes were all for the Kazekage.

“I suppose the grace period is at its end,” Sasori said to Gaara. He jerked his head at Sakura. “And this girl is to be my own personal medic? Should I be flattered?"

Sakura grabbed Sasori’s wrist, digging her fingers into the pulpy cast. Sasori’s eyes left Gaara and dropped to the point at which Sakura gripped him. His mouth moved, upper lip curling. 

 _He doesn’t like to be touched_ , thought Sakura.

She said, “I told you my name: Haruno Sakura. Since I’m going to be the one thing standing between you and death by torture, I’d learn to use it.”  

No need to tell Sasori that she’d thought of a less physical way of getting information out of him. Let him stew in his own mortality.

 _Besides,_ she thought, _if this works out and we get all we need from Sasori, Gaara’s going to want to execute him as soon as possible._

She wondered if he’d use his sand to do it. Had to swallow the lump that rose in her throat.

Sasori was considering her.

“Very well,” he said, “Haruno.”

Every hair on Sakura’s body stood on end. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve insisted on being called by name, after all.

She flicked the hand that wasn’t clasped around Sasori’s wrist, forming a chakra scalpel.  

“Sasori-san,” she said.

Sasori blinked at the polite suffix. But it wasn’t politeness, was the thing: she couldn’t stand to say Sasori’s name without some kind of barrier between it and her tongue.

“What, Haruno?”

Everyone was staring at her. Everyone. Gaara, the ANBU behind their masks, and worst of all, Sasori.

Well. She’d worked in uglier conditions.

“Here’s your last chance to spit everything out.” Sakura waved the chakra scalpel back and forth for emphasis. She was going to use it to heal him, not to hurt him, but it was, in a way, a preview of what Suna’s Interrogation Unit would do to him if Sakura’s plan fell through.

“Say I—to borrow your crude phrase— _spat everything out_. Would the Kazekage really take my word at face value?” Sasori’s voice went guttural, as it often did when the monster behind the pretty face came too close to the surface. “Or would he torture me regardless just to, ah, _fact check_?”

Sakura didn’t have to check with Gaara to know the answer to _that_ question.

“I think you already know,” she said to Sasori, and made the first cut in his cast.


End file.
